Real Personal Computing

I have been thinking about smartphones lately, and wondering about what will be the next innovation for this class of personal computer. From a hardware standpoint, I think there is one remaining frontier of innovation for smartphones, and all remaining innovation will come from software.

Hardware manufacturers are stuck within the constraints of these devices because they are essentially slabs of plastic, and there is not too much you can do to make one slab stand out from another. So far, hardware manufacturers are focusing on size, but with 6 inch phones already on the market, and 7 inch slabs defined as tablets, it appears the phablet has hit a ceiling.

In my opinion the remaining field of hardware innovation for smartphones is in battery life. The quickest way for a company to grab a huge amount of the smartphone market is to produce a smartphone that can go a week between battery charges. Unfortunately, we appear to be a long way away from seeing real innovation in battery life.

Clearly, with all hardware being equal, the only way one smartphone stands apart from another is in software. Apple has exploited software the most by marketing an app store that has a huge catalog of apps for every situation imaginable. The problem with the app store is that one only uses a handful of apps, and there is only so many ways that a farting app can be made.

The direction that I see smartphones heading towards is in what I call really personal computing. As I have written before, the “personal” part of personal computing is transforming from representing the number of people who use a computer to defining the type of computing that the device performs.

By my definition, a personal computer can be tailored to my tastes and personality, knows and anticipates my needs, and supports multiple modes of interaction. Personal computing is intelligence aided by context to assist the user with doing whatever needs to be done throughout the day.

In the prologue for his book On Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins, who started Palm Computing and Handspring, writes that he wants to build truly intelligent machines. To do so, he is studying the brain, and Hawkins says by doing so, “We will be able to build genuinely intelligent machines, although they won’t be anything like the robots of popular fiction and computer science fantasy. Rather, intelligent machines will arise from a new set of principles about the nature of intelligence. As such, they will help us accelerate our knowledge of the world, help us explore the universe, and make the world safer.”

Hawkins believes that autonomous robots like Rosie from the Jetsons provide little benefit to humans, but what will provide benefit to humans are machines intelligent enough to assist us as we live our lives. Perhaps the best example that I can think of for the development of this type of intelligent machines is self-driving cars.

Google is investing huge amounts of money in the development of a self-driving car, and has realized a great deal of success in developing such a car. Today, if you are driving in Mountain View California, you might even cross paths with the Google car.

Most people find the idea of sitting in a car that drives itself scary, and something they will never do. To be safe on the road the Google car has to be an intelligent machine, and it is going to take time for us to trust it. Consider, however, parking assistance, collision avoidance, self-breaking, and lane change detection features available right now in many high-end automobiles. We are much more comfortable with these intelligent features that make it safer for us to drive, and this is the type of benefit that Hawkins sees intelligent machines providing.

I believe smartphones will become intelligent machines, and the ones that provide us with the most assistance by being the most personal, will be the ones that will continue to succeed in the market over the long term. In future articles, I will explore the ways that I see smartphones evolving into intelligent machines.

Google has announced Android Wear, which according to them is “a project that extends Android to wearables.” Up until this announcement Google Glass has been the company’s wearable computing focus, but Android Wear appears to be focused on smart watches.

Ever since Dick Tracy, it seems we have had a fascination with small computing and communication devices on our wrist. Smartphones have received most of the focus of portable computing, but smart watches actually have had as long a history as smartphones.

If it becomes a market success, smart watches will be another blow to Microsoft. In 2004 Microsoft introduced SPOT watches, which were watches with LCD screens that displayed small bits of content along with different watch faces. Microsoft was able to get watch manufacturers like Fossil to make them, and they gave it a “college try” before putting an end to the product in 2008.

SPOT is an acronym that stands for Smart Personal Object Technology, and included a wireless communication integrated with MSN Direct. Microsoft intended SPOT to be used in a variety of devices including coffee makers and weather stations, but the watches from Fossil and Suunto were the most sold of the products.

SPOT watches did not integrate direct with any computing device, be they smartphone, PDA, or notebook computer, but the wireless technology behind it enabled it to stand alone. Perhaps one of its most interesting features, the wireless technology of SPOT utilized open space in the FM wireless spectrum. Users were not charged for using the wireless communication, although there was a yearly subscription. Amazon’s WhisperSync most reminds me of how SPOT worked, the wireless communication was so integrated that users really did not need to know anything about it.

One of the difficulties with SPOT is that it didn’t integrate well with your personal information. If you integrated Outlook with MSN Direct you might be able to get your appointments to display on the watch, but none of your other personal information was accessible.

At the time, the reason why one choose to wear a SPOT watch is that they provided “glanceable information“, not too unlike the notifications we are now familiar with on smartphones. For example, I had a sports channel on my watch that showed the latest scores of my favorite team’s games as they were being played. I also got weather and stock updates.

The biggest problem with the SPOT watches was that they were much larger and clunkier than regular watches. Later iterations of the watches had better designs, but still wouldn’t be desirable for anyone with small wrists.

Another problem is that the phones had to be re-charged, about every five days or so. The watches used inductive charging and came with a charging cradle, but if you traveled you had to carry the charging cradle. Battery charging will continue to be an impediment for smart watches. People who still wear watches are not used to having to charge them at all as most have batteries or some built-in form of charging.

It’s interesting to me that so much energy has been spent on smart watches. With the emergence of smartphones, fewer people are wearing watches today, most simply check the time on their phone, which they always have on their person. Further, the new smart watches need to connect to a smartphone for wireless data and communication purposes meaning you now need both on your person at all times.

One difference between 2008 and now is the increase use of fitness bands like the Jawbone UP. More people are wearing these devices to track their activity and sleeping, and Android Wear will support that data collection too, however, I won’t wear a full size watch when I sleep at night. I’ve barely become used to wearing the UP band.

Pictures of potential devices show that the manufacturers are aware that design matters, but any watch that has a face is going to be larger that the fitness bands on the market today. Right now the smart watch category has not really been market tested. The Pebble is probably the most successful smart watch on the market right now, and so far I haven’t seen anyone who wears one, have you?