General

Attack of the Smartphones

Smartphones are becoming more and more prevalent today. The devices have transcended the business world and moved into the major consumer market. This can be mainly attributed to the advent of the iPhone, but that is not the subject of discussion here.

Smartphones are permeating different areas of our lives and two of those areas are Air Travel and Hotel Accommodation. A few months ago United Airlines joined the bandwagon of offering mobile boarding passes for passengers. Now you don’t have worry about losing that piece of paper before you get to the flight, just worry about losing your phone. Passengers receive an email containing an encrypted two dimensional barcode. This barcode contains details of the flight, seat assignment and gate number. All the passenger has to do is load up the email and flash it at the reader in the required locations in the airport.

Taking a lead from this innovation is the hotel industry. The InterContinental Hotels Group announced yesterday that the Holiday Inn hotels, which it owns, will also have room keys functioning in the same manner. Initially the service will be tested out in the Chicago and Houston locations. To use the service, guests have to first register with the hotel and then download an app to their phones. To open the door to their room, they simple have to open up the confirmation email they receive and the point it at the scanner.

The ideas seem to be progressing in the right direction. However, it would be more practical if a standard could be arrived at by all smartphone makers so that more industries can take advantage of this convenient piece of technology.

Nokia and the N8 with everything on it

Nokia unveiled the N8 today and by the looks of it, the touch screen phone has some potential. The N8 comes with so many features that it feels like the brief to the design team was inspired by a hot dog – “we want a phone – with everything on it!”

The N8 is equipped with a 12 megapixel Carl Zeiss camera which includes a Xenon flash. Nokia claims that the camera’s sensor compares to those found in point-and-shoot digital cameras. But that’s where the usual feature set stops.

The phone displays HD quality videos and provides Dolby Digital Plus surround sound. Using an HDMI cable, it can be plugged in directly to a home theatre system. The home screen is the location of two key features. Web TV services can be directly accessed & viewed from here and a combined Facebook & Twitter app is also found here. The phone also comes with navigation support; it has global Ovi maps free of charge, with support for over 70 countries.

The N8 comes with 16GB of built-in storage and supports expansion up to 48GB via Micro SD card. It will also be the first phone that shows off the new Symbian 3 OS. The new OS supports single & multi touch, pinch-to-zoom, screen flicking, 2D & 3D graphics, better memory management and multi tasking.

The phone is slated to hit stores in the next calendar quarter. With projected price tag of under $500, the phone looks like it could be the iPhone killer – at least on paper. However with the iPhone 4G coming out soon and Android phones building up steam, the future and success of the N8 model is a difficult one to predict.

Apple’s Latest Lawsuit

Elan Microelectronics, the Taiwanese touch screen maker is suing Apple for patent infringement. They claim that they have the patent for the multi touch technology that Apple is using on many of their products. Elan has also complained to the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) about the infringement. The ITC in turn has ordered an investigation into the matter.

This is where the news gets worse for Apple. If the ITC find Apple guilty of the charges, they can ban the import and sale of all products which contain that technology. This would essentially mean the end of iPods, iPads, iPhones, Mac book Pro’s, etc. If a cease and desist order is given, then even the existing stock cannot be sold.
Controversy is nothing new for Apple, it has always been in the middle of a lawsuit – either being sued or suing someone else. Recently, in what was seen as a masked attack on Google and its Android software, Apple sued HTC for touch screen patent infringement. Eastman Kodak sued Apple over the iPhone and Research in Motion over the Blackberry, for patent infringement. However, the touch screen lawsuit and investigation by the ITC will be a tough hurdle to get over.

Elan, unlike its Taiwanese counterpart HTC, is extremely confident of winning the lawsuit. History is on their side; in a similar lawsuit in 2008, the company successfully settled against Synaptics. The same result is expected in California, where Elan has filed the lawsuit. Even the ITC’s investigation is expected to be sorted out amicably, with Elan probably reaching a licensing agreement with Apple.

Was it the Real iPhone 4G?

Last week, gadget blog Gizmodo reported the story of a lost iPhone which came into their possession. What made this story newsworthy was that the phone in question was a prototype iPhone 4G.

The brief background to the story is as follows. Apple employee Gray Powell had celebrated his birthday at a German beer garden and left his phone behind. The person who found the phone made efforts to find the owner and after failing to do so realized what he had in his hands. He then promptly sold it to Gizmodo.

The features on the phone reported by Gizmodo do seem to fall in line with what is expected from Apple’s new phone. However the story reeks of a publicity stunt. The iPhone 4G is a hotly awaited piece of hardware. But even with a product like that, it doesn’t hurt to stir up the pot a little bit. Apple’s publicity stunts are usually well thought out and executed. In that light, this incident falls into place quite nicely.

Consider this:

- the employee never made an attempt to recover the phone
- the phone was shutdown remotely, before Gizmodo could test it out
- the device looked a little different than the usual sleek design style of Apple products (it looked boxy and had little round buttons on the side)

The two possible conclusions that can be drawn from this are:

1. This is Apple’s teaser campaign.
2. This is Apple’s way of throwing people off course and creating a buzz about the ugly design etc.
Of course, it could be that all of this was genuine. In that case, spare a thought for poor Mr. Powell and his career.

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