We want our devices everywhere; one pic summarises it all

Maybe an opportunity for a 'tPad' or a 'toilet pad'. This is from a presentation in LTE World Summit 2012. The presentation is available here if interested.

The Next ‘Killer Device’ - #LTEWS

From my Breakfast Briefing in the 8th LTE World Summit on 23rd May 2012. 

The Next ‘Killer Device’ from eXplanoTech

Signalling Load per device and OS

From the presentation by Martin Prosek, Telefonica, Czech Republic in 3G Optimization Conference 2012, Prague.

Signalling can cause many issues:

In the mobile device, Frequent PDP-context establishment is known to drain the battery. Battery life can be improved by supporting fast dormancy in network.

In the network, Signalling flood can create situations reminding DoS attacks. Increased signalling in RAN can cause impacts in core network:

• Radius/Diameter interface overload of AAA servers
• DHCP IP address pools exhaustion

A look at how an iPad is made

I found this interesting, how everything is nearly automated in making of these phones and tablets

Source Credit - American Public Media's 'Marketplace'.
Reporter Credit - Rob Schmitz, Shanghai Bureau Chief

It may just be a matter of time till some of the functionality that people are doing would be replaced by arm robots, like the ones in the video below that show Toyota Camry being made mostly by robots

6 ways NFC will change your world

Orange Business Services - 6 ways NFC will change your world

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Will it? What do you think?

'Blue Tick' for better RF performance

Last year I blogged about 'Antennagate'. From what I hear, iPhone 4S has left this problem far behind and have a much better RF performance than other rivals.

The Australian operator Telstra operates a scheme where it gives a 'blue tick' to all mobiles that have superior RF performance than other average mobiles.

The following is an interesting comment from their Crowdsupport site:


Telstra offers three classes of coverage, A B and C.


C Class coverage is Blue Tick coverage. These phones are designed in such a way that they will outperform other phones in coverage. That is ,they will hold onto a signal further than B or A class phones


Most smartphones due to the way they are manufactures are B class, because of their thinness and materials (such as glass and plastic)


The Atrix and Defy are Blue Tick because the plastic chassis that houses the antenna stops your hand from attenuating the signal.


The iPhone 4S is Blue Tick because the dual antenna design intelligently switches antennas if one gets attenuated.


Blue Tick phones do not assist with high traffic areas. They only assist users in low coverage areas. So a phone in the Melbourne CBD would behave much like any other Telstra phone. Whereas a Blue Tick phone out in rural areas would have better signal coverage than a B or A class phone.


Telstra empirically tests all it's phones because we reach more of the population and many rural people rely on mobile phones with each passing year.


It may be a good idea that operators in other countries start supporting a similar scheme so users who get very little reception in their houses or places of work can get a phone with better RF capabilities.

Any similar schemes operating in other countries?

LTE Devices Chart: 269 products from 57 manufacturers as of Jan. 2012

Via: GSA

Adding new dimensions to the future phones - Smell

I am going to be involved in two events in the coming months to discuss about Evolution of Devices in the future. The first of them is the LTE World Summit that I have been going to for years and have recommended to lots of clients, colleagues and friends. In there I will be discussing about 'The Future Device' in the Breakfast briefing. In June I am chairing a session on 'Where Next For Devices' in The Future of Wireless International Conference. As a result I would be discussing some ideas on the blog with the intention of getting some valuable feedback and comments.

Smell has been associated with the mobile devices for a long time. There are two concepts floating around. The first is a phone that can smell the environment for certain odour or harmful gases and depending on what it smells, alerts the user or some authority. An example of this are the phones being developed by US Department of Homeland Security to smell poisonous gases. Another example is the e-nose concept developed by Imec, Belgium. There are other concepts being developed around m-health to help people with Asthma.

The second of these concepts are the devices that can emit smell. The simplest form of this would be like the Sony phones that emit fragrance for a few months and then a new sheet can be inserted for them to keep emitting a fragrance. A while back it was reported that Samsung has filed a patent for something similar.

Nokia had shown years back the 'Scentsory Concept' mobile that can transmit smell based on the environment to the other party who can get the feeling of where the other person is. Since then they have shown other concepts but I dont recall seeing much on smell. The 'HumanForm' concept I blogged about last year showed that we would be able to feel the environment but it was surprisingly quiet about smell part.

There is an interesting TEDx video in which Jenny Tillotson, who would be presenting her latest research in the Future Wireless conference mentioned abaove, is explaining some of these concepts on transmitting smell electronically. Video embedded below:



I would be very interested in hearing more on this topic from the readers.

US Trends and Updates on Mobile Broadband, VoIP and Mobile Service Status

Presentations From the 2nd FOKUS FUSECO Forum 2011, Berlin 17-18 Nov. 2011

Mobile Service Status and Trends in the US

View more presentations from Zahid Ghadialy

Mobile Broadband and VoIP in the US: Trends and Updates

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A Golden Next-Gen Hetrogeneous Device

From the 4th LTE North America Conference, 8 - 9 November 2011, Dallas, Texas, USA
Presented by Joe Lawrence, Vice President, CDMA Development Group (CDG)

Nice Pie Chart on different Android Devices

Click to enlarge

I guess Pie charts like these can convey more information then writing about the percentages of devices sold. Maybe we should use them more often to represent information.

Source: From a presentation by Deutsche Bank in the 4th LTE North America Conference, 8 - 9 November 2011, Dallas, Texas, USA

Another concept phone from Nokia called 'HumanForm'

Description as follows:

HumanForm was created in a joint effort between Nokia Design and Nokia Research Center to translate the most promising new nanotechnologies into meaningful user experience, prototype those for decision making; and transfer and set aspiration for future portfolio.

Project is a key to bring significant user experience benefits to the market thereby creating mindshare and value share through nanotechnology enabled experiences.

HumanForm is a visionary solution for a dynamically flexible device beyond touch screen and voice communication where technology is invisible and intuition takes over. Natural interactions are enabled with kinetic user interface.

HumanForm concept and a follow-up Nokia Kinetic Device prototype were launched in Nokia World 2011.

To learn more, visit: http://research.nokia.com/

LTE for Mobile Consumer Devices

LTE for Mobile Consumer Devices

View more presentations from Zahid Ghadialy

From the 2nd ETSI M2M Workshop, Oct. 2011. All presentations available here.

Related posts:

• 6th ETSI Security Workshop
• 1st ETSI M2M Workshop summary and conclusions

Devices may require support for over 40 RF Bands to be used universally

Interesting picture from Qualcomm presentation in 4G World that shows that for Universal use, a device may have to support over 40 RF bands (which may not be physically possible and may also be overly expensive)

Related posts:

• A global analysis of LTE spectrum requirements and business models
• LTE Spectrum Strategies and Forecasts to 2016
• Global survey of the Status of LTE Ecosystem

Phones with Flexible Screens in 2012

From PC World:

Samsung Electronics said Friday that it is aiming to launch mobile phones with flexible displays next year, with tablets and other portable devices to have these displays soon after.

The company said it was aiming to follow on the success of its Galaxy S II smartphone, which has now sold 10 million units in five months.

The comments came as the company discussed its earnings for the three-month period through September. Samsung said its overall profit fell 23 percent from a year ago to 3.44 trillion Korean won (US$3.1 billion), dragged down by its chip and display operations, but operating profit at its mobile unit more than doubled in the period.

"The flexible display, we are looking to introduce sometime in 2012, hopefully the earlier part," said spokesman Robert Yi during an earnings call. "The application probably will start from the handset side."

Yi said tablets and other mobile devices with flexible displays would follow.

Samsung has shown flexible OLED (organic light emitting diode) displays inside rigid cases that kept the screens curved. The technology has material within each pixel that generates light, making it perhaps more suitable for flexible screens than LCDs, which would require both a flexible screen and a backlight.

This is a Video from CES 2011 in January:

I like this concept of bendy phones. The following Nokia video shows how this could really be useful.

Toshiba shows something similar at SID 2010.

News via WebProNews.

Presentation: Its about people, not devices

Its about people, not devices

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'Internet Trends' and 'Mobile Internet Trends' by Mary Meeker

Came across this article from InformationWeek based on this presentation by Mary Meeker. Few points to note from the article:

Mobile: Mobile subscriber growth is continuing at a pace that matches the meteoric rise of Internet adoption, a rate that puts other technologies like TV to shame. Meeker cited 35% year-on-year mobile 3G subscriber growth and noted that smartphone shipments have surpassed feature phone shipments in the U.S. and Europe. She also highlighted the explosive growth of iPhone, iPad, and (particularly) Android.

User Interface: Interface matters. "Before Steve Jobs, computers were utilitarian tools for computation," said Meeker. "After Steve, computers became beautiful objects we could use in thousands of ways to aim to make life better." In the wake of the iPhone and the iPad, there's a revolution in the way we interact with computers, through touch and voice, while mobile. "We think the next big things are the things on the sides of your head," said Meeker. "Those would be your ears." She was referring to the innovation seen in voice recognition, sound creation and sharing, and audio interfaces like headphones recently.

America Leads In Mobile Innovation: Despite the general economic doldrums in the U.S., American companies are leading the way toward the mobile era. Made-in-the-USA smartphone operating systems--Android, iOS, and Windows Mobile--have gone from 5% market share in 2005 to 65% today. "The pace of innovation in Silicon Valley may be unprecedented," said Meeker.

Mobile Devices Are Empowering People: Some 85% of people in the world have access to the wireless grid, more than have access to electricity. Over 200 million farmers in India receive payments via mobile devices. Meeker pointed out how instrumental such devices have been during disasters like the March earthquake and tsunami in Japan. "When people look back at this era that we're living in now, they'll say this was the time people got empowered by mobile devices," said Meeker.

The video of her talk is embedded below:

Couple of presentations from her are embedded below:

Mary Meeker - Internet Trends 2011 KPCN 18 oct 2011

View more presentations from ceobroadband

Mary Meeker - Top Mobile Internet Trends - 10 feb 2011

View more presentations from ceobroadband

Telenor: Trends of Mobile Services

ALL FOR BROADBAND Conference Budapest 3 march 2011 TELENOR

View more presentations from ceobroadband

Global Mobile Industry assessment for H1 2011 by Chetan Sharma

State of the Global Mobile Industry - Chetan Sharma Consulting

View more presentations from Chetan Sharma

Future Mobile devices: Winners & Losers in technology

NTT DOCOMO announced a range of futuristic ideas and products that they are going to demo at CEATEC this month. Some of the products/ideas as follows:

Extra-high-speed, next-generation LTE service

• Experience the first Xi-compatible tablets “docomo Tablet GALAXY Tab 10.1 LTE SC-01D” and “docomo Tablet ARROWS Tab LTE F-01D,” set for October release.
• Try out new broadband services for the high-performance Xi network, including internationally popular services and games such as Hulu and Qik Video.

Smartphone-ready device to measure acetone in breath for diet support

• The compact device measuring acetone for diet support that can easily be used anywhere and anytime.
• Visitors blow into the smartphone-connected device to measure acetone in their breath-the higher the concentration, the greater the level of hunger.
• The device also identifies when people are burning fat, based on the concentration of acetone in their breath, which rises when body fat is being burnt.

Smartphone jacket for ultra-high-speed battery charging

• This special battery jacket for smartphones achieves a full charge in just 10 minutes. A recharging indicator will show how the jacket will charge a smartphone 10~15 times faster than conventional charging devices.

Smartphone jackets for various purposes

• Three types of special jackets for smartphones that are equipped with sensors that can be customized to measure ultraviolet light and bad breath, gamma radiation and body fat.

Environmental sensor network

• Presentation of real-time atmospheric data (temperature, humidity, wind direction/speed, precipitation, ultraviolet intensity) collected by DOCOMO’s nationwide network of approximately 2,500 environmental sensors, and a demonstration of visualizing the data using augmented reality.

The DOCOMO booth will also offer a mobile handset recycling service, where visitors can drop off old and unwanted mobile phones, rechargers, battery packs and stands. This service is open to all mobile phone users regardless of their carrier, and mobile phones will be destroyed using specialized tools to ensure the protection of personal information.

You can watch these in action here:

I also recently attended a Cambridge Wireless Handset SIG event and David Wood gave an interesting presentation that is embedded below:

Where Next after 10 Years of Smartphones?

View more presentations from Zahid Ghadialy

Other presentations from that event available here.