At the start of the millennium, one of my father’s friend brought a phone for emergency use. It was the first mobile phone, I owned.
Heck, I had seen a lot of pictures on my painstakingly slow dial-up internet and had seen a couple of people use it too. But, for the first time I used it for myself. It was an old Ericsson model. Heavy as a brick, with the antenna peaking at the top. And the screen or a strip was just a size of a finger. SMSes were a pain to send and receive. Calls were the easy way to communicate.
Later on, this era evolved into ever popular phones like Nokia 3310 and 3315. They didn’t provide you with much functionality. But they brought the mobile experience to more general mass. Mind you, they were still costly.
I call this period “Talk and read” era as, most of the time, the primary use of the mobile phone was to receive calls and messages.
Then arrived the plethora of multimedia phones. Mp3 songs and ringtones, cameras ( of very mediocre quality mind you). People began to listen to the songs, watch videos, click photos using their mobile phones.
A mp3 player or a camera was considered to be a different entity before the arrival of phones like Nokia 6600, Sony’s walkman series and Motorola’s Razr series. The quality of the sound and resolution of a camera sensor was now an important factor for people buying the phones.
I call this period “Listen and see” era. Or alternatively the “Multimedia era”.
In year 2007 iPhone was launched by Apple, a prominent touchscreen phone. I bought Nokia 5800 (One of the many to be labeled iPhone killer). It had a resistive touchscreen, which gave you a feedback jolt (vibration is a mild word) whenever you performed an action.
Even though, the operations on that phone were slightly difficult and moving from the keypad to the touchscreen took a bit of time, I loved the experience. Many of my friends ridiculed me for the decision. Yet, I was fascinated by the touchscreen technology, bigger and brighter screen, easier access to the internet.
For many years, iPhone was not easily available or affordable in India (Situation hasn’t changed much). But Google worked on Android and that brought the touchscreen-internet revolution to India and the world.
Apple revolutionized computing by introducing iPad to the world. They stopped the march of PC and Laptop sales to a large effect. Yes, in last quarter or so tablet sales have been slowing down and PC industry might have picked up a bit of pace. But, users now had an option of a different form of computing.
The question remains,” what next?” in the world of mobile or computing. In
In 2012, Google launched their ambitious Glass project. They had the best keynote ever, but eventually the pace of project slowed down.
What Google wanted to do was to provide a heads-up display for the smartphone. They failed to woo the consumer. However, there are many potential enterprise mobile applications for the Glass.
And recently they announced to close the Glass Explorer program and then eventually revamp the whole Google Glass experience.
Meanwhile a company called Oculus did a revolutionary work in VR space with Oculus Rift, but mostly that was related to gaming. Sony also threw in their Project Morpheus last year.
But one of the most eye-catching announcement from recent time has come from the people at Microsoft. They unveiled something called HoloLens. This VR experience will embed the Windows Operating system with your real-life settings. This may provide developers and software makers with an unlimited opportunity to use the space around people.
Till now solutions to many problems have been limited by the screen size. Innovations like HoloLens and Oculus Rift might change this. And users would also have the benefit of ‘experiencing’ the technology. In the near future, VR won’t be available to the mass and won’t necessarily replace the mobile phone.
Another development in the mobile technology space is SmartWatches and the Internet of Things. They are in the direction to be a part of the daily experience. Both VR and Smart Watches are not capable of operating at the independent level at the moment. But, they can be great companions of the smartphone.
We are in the direction of bringing the technology and mobile computing to our surroundings. We are entering the “Experience Era”
B for Byte 