SectionSmartphones Title Here Editor: Editor Name HereEditor: n Roy Editor Want affiliation n Google here n n [email protected] editor email here Smartphones: Past, Present, and Future Nayeem Islam, Qualcomm Roy Want, Google or most of us, it’s hard to imagine a few useful applications. The user inter- US market. However, success was F a time when we couldn’t read our face was typically a small, restricted key- mainly limited to enterprise custom- email using a mobile phone or post pic- board, and novel (but painfully slow) ers who wanted secure email access. tures of events and then instantly share use of the number keypad allowed for The Blackberry was small, but with a them. Today, we use smartphones like text input. Nonetheless, these devices well-designed full-feature miniature personal assistants to search for and hinted at the tremendous possibilities keyboard, suited to rapid two-thumb locate stores, hotels, and restaurants. We for an integrated device. typing, but it never became a fully gen- even use our smartphones to monitor Later came IBM’s Simon, Nokia’s eral-purpose mobile computing device. our health through activity logging, find Communicator, and Qualcomm’s PdQ, In the 2000s, 3G networks were our location on maps, watch videos, and which were launched through the latter deployed, further increasing speeds and buy products on the Internet. We have 1990s, combining an expanded com- the reach of high-speed data. Other devel- lived through an unprecedented revolu- puting and phone functionality. These opments, such as Qualcomm’s Binary tion in which cellphones have evolved devices were more generally character- Runtime Environment for Wireless from devices primarily used to make ized as feature phones, rather than smart- (BREW), also allowed cellular carriers phone calls, to computing devices that phones, but that changed in 1999, when to deploy mobile ecosystems worldwide. let us stay connected with other people Japan’s NTT DoCoMo introduced the In 2007, Apple launched its iPhone, and information at all times. i-mode system. setting a new standard for mobile Here, we review this evolution—dis- The one major thing missing from computer-integrated telephony, with an cussing how technology finally caught the user experience of these devices was open developer community contribut- up with the vision of an integrated rich content, and the i-mode system ing a wide spectrum of novel capabili- device—and consider what’s next on let mobile users access sophisticated ties through Apple’s app store opened in the horizon. In particular, we focus on Internet services, such as websites and 2008. Subsequently, Google released the six trends that we predict will strongly Internet email. The initial i-mode sys- Android operating system as the AOSP influence the function and design of tem took advantage of websites written (Android Open Source Project), which future smartphones. in a restricted subset of HTML, called was adopted by many smartphone C-HTML, enabling data to be viewed handset manufacturers and launched HisTORY OF The MOBILE on a mobile phone browser with a lim- worldwide. Accelerated by both open PHONE ited display. The i-mode system had software and the wide variety of phone As long ago as the 1970s, researchers widespread adoption and attracted tens hardware it could run on, the developer such as Theodore G. Paraskevakos con- of millions of subscribers within a few community expanded even more rap- ceptualized devices that combined tele- short years of its release. Clearly, i-mode idly, creating its own extensive app store. phony and computing. Two decades devices brought increased functionality, later, in the early 1990s, several pro- facilitated by higher network speeds that TODAY’S SMARTphONES totype multifunction devices finally let users have a more compelling user According to IDC, Android and iOS appeared (see Table 1). Many of these experience than previous technologies. currently lead the world smartphone prototypes were bulky, ran on low data- At about the same time, the Black- market, with Android holding a share rate networks at speeds less than 100 berry smartphone became estab- of approximately 81.1 percent, and iOS kbps (typically 14.4 kbps), and had only lished and started flourishing in the holding 15.2 percent. The remaining Published by the IEEE CS n 1536-1268/14/$31.00 © 2014 IEEE PERVASIVE computing 89 SMARTPHONES SMARTPHONES TABLE 1 market share is Windows Mobile at 2.7 A history of the mobile phone leading up to the modern smartphone. (Only models with significant evolution in phone capability are listed.) percent, Blackberry at 0.5 percent, and others at 0.6 percent (see Figure 1).1 Year Cell phone model Company This revolution has made Internet 1973 “First Cellphone” demo Motorola applications, once only available to desk- 1984 DynaTAC 8000X Motorola top users, easily accessible to anybody 1989 MicroTAC 9800X Motorola with a mobile device, resulting in almost anytime, anywhere access. Along the way, 1992 1011 Nokia several innovations have been critical for 1994 Simon IBM the adoption of smartphones—namely, 1996 9000 Communicator Nokia high-speed data networks such as 3G 1999 pdQ Qualcomm and 4G (LTE), which have been widely 1999 9110 Nokia deployed; modern operating systems with 1999 8210 Nokia easy-to-program interfaces and rich pro- 1999 850 Blackberry gramming tools; and business models for deploying applications such as app stores. 2000 R320 Ericsson Components such as the capacitive mul- 2002 SCP-5300 Sanyo titouch screen that let our fingers easily 2002 N21i (i-mode) NEC zoom and select graphical components 2003 7230 BlackBerry of a complex user interface are equally 2004 Razr V3 (Symbian) Motorola important ingredients for improved 2005 II Sidekick usability, reducing the difficulty of inter- acting with a pocket-sized device for 2007 iPhone (iOS) Apple real-world tasks. These innovations have 2007 m550i (i-mode) Sony Ericsson transformed the mobile phone ecosystem. 2009 Droid (Android) Motorola 2011 HD7 (Windows Phone 7) HTC WHAT’S NeXT? 2012 Galaxy S3 (Android) Samsung As we look forward to the next decade, the 2012 iPhone 5 (iOS) Apple smartphone experience is about to change 2012 Lumia 920 (Windows Phone 8) Nokia once again. Here, we look into our crystal ball and predict tremendous growth in the 2014 Galaxy S5 (Android) Samsung following six areas (see Table 2). 2014 iPhone 6 (iOS) Apple Personal Computers Smartphones are already being designed around multicore proces- sors and will follow a path to similar 80 desktop and laptop performance, only 70 lagging behind due to limited battery 60 capacity and operating temperatures. 50 However, desktops already have more 40 processing performance than is neces- sary for many common applications, Percentage 30 and a lower-power smartphone can 20 still meet many of our requirements. As 10 CMOS transistor technology continues 0 to improve, the future smartphone will Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 be capable of all but the most compute- 2011 2012 2013 2014 intensive tasks required for our daily work. Some of the improvements in Android iOS Windows phone Blackberry OS Others performance will result from system- on-chip (SoC) designs, which might Figure 1. The market share of the various mobile OSs by year.1 include highly specialized low-power 90 PERVASIVE computing www.computer.org/pervasive SMARTPHONES TABLE 2 Six major trends affecting future smartphone design and use. Trends Impact Personal computing Smartphones will become our primary computing platform and will dock with nearby displays and key- boards. They will become our computation, storage, and network hub. Internet of Things (IoT) The smartphone will be the on-ramp for the IoT, letting you locate and interact with the world around you as easily as you currently search for information on the Internet. Multimedia delivery The smartphone will rival more traditional platforms, such as the TV or desktop computer, for watching videos, and even storing libraries of multimedia content. Low power operation The battery in smartphones will last longer, aided by new software structuring techniques and low- power hardware accelerators. Wearable computing The smartphone will be foldable and will take on unconventional shapes. It will merge into a diverse set of wearable technologies, from wrist-mounted devices to glasses and extensions of our clothing. Context awareness Smartphones will be more context-aware and able to adapt to nearby people, places, and things. accelerator hardware for common to the need for high-bandwidth links larger screens, or devices known today as applications, such as video compression used in the general Internet. Exam- phablets—something that is in-between a or cryptographic encryption. ples of technologies that facilitate IoT phone and tablet. There will soon be a lot New memory technologies that have are near-field communication and the more devices with five-inch screens. higher capacities, consume less power, nascent Bluetooth Low Energy stan- The challenge won’t be the screen and are cheaper will enable smartphones dard, which can be used in conjunction resolution but the enormous comput- to store terabytes of data. This will lead with existing cellular and Wi-Fi radio ing power in the CPU and GPU, and the to a new breed of applications that store technologies. As these newer standards hardware interconnects required to move personal content and context, enhancing are used more widely, the mobile phone such large amounts of data inside the the speed of access and privacy of user will become a control and sensing hub. SoC. The cellular service provider proto- data. As a result, sophisticated apps will The applications of IoT are immense cols supported by the handsets must also be developed that mine person data to and can take over areas that have tra- evolve to support the download of high- present relevant information or that take ditionally been the domain of bespoke resolution streaming video.