Random Thoughts About Smart Phones

[Bob Russell]

Was reading about smart phones and it hit me one more reason I don’t like the growth of smart phones over traditional PDAs (besides the compromise of the PDA specs and screen and battery issues, like we’ve all discussed before.)

As an analogy, remember how before the internet you used to control your own PC. No big worries about being exposed to evil stuff out there. When you did something on your PC it was basically handled locally. Then Microsoft IE and the Windows upgrades and all kinds of other programs started trying to make things “seamless.” Basically, they took matters out of your hands and you didn’t really know when your computer was talking to the internet and why. You didn’t know exactly what ActiveX controls were going to do under the covers. You lost control. And look at the result. We’ve been forced to accept levels of blind trust relative to internet communications that we never would have accepted in the beginning, but Microsoft and others ramped it up for the more valuable purposes like Windows upgrades and you really didn’t have any choice. You got accustomed to letting them control the terms and methods of your interaction with the web.

Now think about PDAs. True, we have WiFi and Bluetooth in traditional PDAs and they have a level of exposure to internet villains. But now with smart phones you see the game changing already again. Now smart phone makers and wireless carriers are bending the rules of play according to their own wishes, not according to the best interests of us customers. Bottom line is they want to sell downloads and content and wireless minutes, whether data or voice. That means that all the core software is tailored to their plans. They want hooks into their distribution systems. They want to get you on their data plans. They want you running their software for monitoring and controlling the way you connect in this new interconnected world. (I bet some of our readers that are already using smart phones can give some real-life examples of this, or alternatively they can dispute this viewpoint.)

I’m sure there will be great benefits and features, but I’m not so sure I am comfortable being forced into doing things in new ways designed by the people trying to take control of how I spend my money. Some of the things I might not feel comfortable with right now are probably going to become commonplace soon. Just watch… you will see more and more the wireless carriers are going to steer OS development for smart phones and we’re going to be doing things according to their best interest. We’re going to lose control of how we interconnect. We’re going to be paying through the nose for wireless data plans and published content. It's going to have such strong DRM that it's useless except on your smart phone. And we’re going to be upgrading both for phone technology and for PDA technology.

I think, for now, I’ll stick with my traditional PDA. And maybe we’ll see growth of some WiFi-like technology until it is a ubiquitous alternative to wireless carriers. Am I concerned for no reason? Too early to tell, I guess, but the future will be interesting, and there's some very talented people out there trying to determine the future of mobile computing on our behalf... or at least on someone's behalf.

And a general MobileRead thought as a postscript--
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[TadW]

Well said, Bob! I have to agree that today cell phone carriers dictate the way how smartphones + PDAs have to look more than ever before. And I am afraid it will become worse. That is probably the price those people have to pay who screamed for "convergence".