JeffKirvin.net

I love my cell phone. I really do. Bluetooth and 1xRTT, what could be
better?

Well, let me tell you. As l’ve mentioned before, l see the phone as the
communications module in a Bluetooth PAN. My current phone does an
admirable job with this, but I’d love to see a phone with:

WiFi. Some cell phones already support this, and I think this will only
become more common as time goes on. Carriers are smart enough to realize
that it works to their advantage if data users don’t clog up their networks
with traffic. Let them eat WiFi! So I think Motorola’s v600 is just the tip
of the WiFi cell phone iceberg.

evDO. 1xRTT is nice, but evDO will be amazing. With a theoretical top speed
of 2.5 megabits per second, evDO rivals WiFi in throughput, but with
greater latency. It won’t be as good as WiFi for highly interactive things
like gaming, but it will work where WiFi won’t: anywhere you have cell
coverage.

Smart switching. This is crucial, and the biggest missing piece. The phone
has to be smart enough to know which data service to use. While still
hooked to your belt or in your pocket, the phone has to automatically sense
nearby hotspots and judge their quality. When an incoming data request
comes in from a paired device (be it a PDA, laptop, whatever), the phone
needs to determine the fastest available data connection and handle the
patch-through transparently. If WiFi is available, use that, and pick the
best of any available hotspots. If WiFi goes down, switch over to evDO (or
even throttle all the way down to 1xRTT) without letting the user know
there’s been a problem.

Of course, great battery life. This is a given in a phone with three, maybe
even four wireless technologies. If the phone only works for a few hours,
it doesn’t do a whole lot of good. This phone should stand up to a hard
day’s data use and still have enough juice left over for a couple hours a
day of voice calls. While I have no problems with charging a phone every
day, it should last the day without a car charger or swapping batteries.

My ideal phone doesn’t exist yet, but we’re close, and there’s really no
reason to believe it won’t exist. All the pieces are there already, but no
one has put them all together in an acceptable package. This is the
communications module I’m waiting for. How about you?