A Truly Smart Smartphone

In the future, your smartphone will truly become smart and then it will become a real personal digital assistant.

I had the opportunity to listen to Nortel’s Phil Edholm, Chief Technologist and Vice President of Network Architecture, speak recently about the future of data and voice convergence, the future of wireless networking, and mobile computing. One of the things that I took away from that keynote session was what the future holds for mobile computing.

Back in the early 1990’s, Apple’s CEO John Scully coined the term “personal digital assistant” to describe the Newton. The term stuck. Years later we are still striving to reach a true digital assistant that is really our personal device. We have yet to see a device so in tune to the person who uses it, that it can anticipate our needs and take action to address them. In short, we have not yet seen a truly smart personal device.

Now before you accuse me of having had too much Sam Adams Boston Logger while at the conference, just hear me out. (And I didn’t by the way, if you must know.) Think about the device you carry with you everywhere. It could be your Treo, Centro, or iPhone. Now, think about what could be possible if that device knew where you where, what you were doing, and was something that you kept with you at all times. Conspiracy theorists don’t get all riled up. Governments have already pretty much implemented the really scary things found in “1984”. So lets just move on.

Ok, one of big issue topics for the foreseeable future is going to be the rising cost of fuel; whether it is for your car, to heat your home; or to generate electricity. If they haven’t already started looking at ways to reduce fuel costs, the business or educational institution you belong to will be before the end of the decade. Demand for fuel is simply to great in developing countries for things to ever just go back to the way they where. Knowing that technology never goes backwards, it will have to help us move forward and become smarter about how we use fuel and energy in the future.

For the sake of argument, I’m going to largely leave 4G networks out of this discussion. The same is true for Wi-Fi and Wi-Max networks. I do expect them to play a key role in the future, however, I’m leaving them out of the equation to avoid any confusion over technologies. Now think about that device you always have in your pocket. Chances are it is a smart device connected to a cellular network. By using the E911 GPS in the device, your cellular network operator has a pretty good idea of where you are at all times. The calendar in your smart device also has an accurate record of what you plan on doing through out the day. Assuming that both are true, your device already knows where you are at all times and what you are suppose to be doing. Now consider if your device was really intelligent and could use it’s always on Internet connection to talk to your home or office building and tell the environmental controls system that you are 15 minutes away from arriving and that it should turn on the heat, lights, and wake up computers. How valuable would it be to you or your employer to know that only the necessary dollars were being spent on energy and electricity costs? I’m guessing the answer is fairly important. Let’s take a look at another example.

Let’s further assume that your smart device is wirelessly connected to an information server; and that this server is automatically updating your PIM data, location, use state, and presence. (Presence in this sense is the same as your presence setting or user state in an IM client: available, away, out to lunch, etc.) Think of how your call queue could be managed. Let’s say you are going to be working from home today to reduce the fuel costs associated with your commute to the office.

Your phone switch would be smart enough to know, based on your presence status, how to route incoming calls. If you are at your desk and your presence is set to Office, then the system knows to route calls to your desk. However, that call might be routed to your home business phone if your presence was set to say, working from home. The system would be smart enough to route calls to your home business line. Like wise, if you were away from your desk and not at home, calls would go to your cell phone. And if you were disconnected from the network or driving in your car, the system would be smart enough to connect your call to voice mail or suggest that an email message might be a batter option.

The things that I’m talking about here are not science fiction. Most of these things could be implemented today. The single barrier to acceptance is the cost to develop and deploy these technologies. Sprint and Verizon are already developing their plans for their next generation wireless networks. Verizon is developing a G$ network with Sprint is developing Wi-Max. Both of these services will allow for devices to remain connected to the network over long distances while inside fast moving vehicles like trains, buses, and cars. Your smartphone or Palm handheld already knows what you planned on doing for the day, and perhaps where you are. The examples I sited are simplistic; however, offer some compelling notions about how technology can be leveraged over the next 3-7 years to help manage operating costs. Once theses technologies have had a chance to mature, I can see them being adopted in large numbers. Physical building control systems, computer data networks and telecom infrastructures will all be upgraded (one way or another) to allow for seamless interoperability between them. The only thing that needs to be ironed out is how we, as a society, will deal with being fully connected all the time and when it is acceptable to unplug.

What are your thoughts on voice, data, and telecom convergence? Let us know in the 1SRC forums.