What next for the smart phone?

By Raj Gawera, VP Marketing Handset Business Unit CSR.

In terms of current technology the smartphone has pretty much every base covered. It takes care of our emails, diaries, work calendars, phone calls, music, photos and videos, social media, and its on-board GPS tells us where we are and the best route to get where we need to be. In fact the smartphone has almost caught up with the laptop and it’s streets ahead already for battery life.

The convergence of the smartphone and the laptop, in particular the notebook, is something that has been debated many times. Today’s smartphone already has the processing and memory power of a laptop from ten years ago so it’s hardly surprising that people are wondering when the functionality from a modern laptop will make it into a phone, and indeed if that will make the laptop redundant.

The laptop will always have a key role to play for mobile business and communications but the increased functionality of the smart phone will see it replacing other devices that play a large part in our lives, from the MP3 players and cameras that it already rivals, to bank cards, keys, heart monitors, medical devices and remote controls. The smartphone’s multiple wireless technologies provide an advantage that a dedicated device can never offer, for example a camera phone can use GPS to geo-tag it and then Wi-Fi to upload the photo to a social networking site.

The smart phone will never replace a laptop and neither will it replace high end consumer goods such as digital SLR cameras and MP4 players, but the majority of people don’t need 80GB of music or a big camera, they need a few GB of music and 5MP camera that will take half decent photos and this is where the smartphone is best placed to take over. Original music phones only had a memory with enough room for a handful of tracks, but with expandable memory options a smartphone is now offering up to 12GB of space for music. Multiple wireless technologies give the smartphone the edge, for instance by using the on-board Wi-Fi the phone can also stream internet radio or an FM transmitter allows music to be played on a car stereo.

Through CSR’s Connectivity Centre products, handset makers can include GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Bluetooth low energy and FM all on a single module, with more room for more to included.. While it is practical for smartphones to include this high level of functionality it’s not for cameras or MP3 players to do the same. The biggest advantage that the smartphone has over a dedicated device such as a camera is the wide range of wireless technologies that it offers, most of which are already built in.

There are also plenty of additional functions that are starting to appear in smartphones and features that will see impressive growth in the coming years. Remote controls have already converged into a single multifunction unit, but with the predicted massive growth in Bluetooth low energy why not include such functions into the phone? You can already use your phone as a remote for laptops through Bluetooth; Bluetooth low energy can take it to the next level by allowing you to control home entertainment equipment, garage doors and even home automation systems such as heating and lights. The built-in GPS could allow the phone to switch on the garage remote function when you return home, switch on the remote for the projector or laptop at work when you’re in the office or even switch off your heating as you leave the house.

Thanks to the growing interest in Near Field Communications (NFC) you could leave your wallet at home and store your bankcard details on your phone instead. CSR demonstrated working NFC silicon at Mobile World Congress in February. The technology could even replace your car keys; many new cars feature keyless entry and ignition, requiring the key-fob to just be within a certain distance for the start button to work. There’s no reason why this technology couldn’t be embedded into a phone to cut down on the number of devices we need to carry with us.

All of this will be enabled through the smart integration of wireless technologies as illustrated in CSR’s Connectivity Centre. The key user benefit for this technological approach is that people should not need to notice what particular technology is at work, only the service that they are receiving as a result. They select location, not switch on GPS; they choose to surf the web, not to activate Wi-Fi to take them onto a wireless access point. With its Synergy software, each technology in CSR’s Connectivity Centre works seamlessly together, enabling the best technology to be used for each purpose without the user having to choose between them.


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