SuperPhone or SubComputer?

There’s a lot of debate right now over the future of Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), so I figured I might as well throw in my two cents and set it all straight. Some folks say that everybody is gonna be dragging around a really small laptop with a ton of power, extremely long battery life, and a full operating system, such as ASUSTeK’s Eee PC or Apple’s MacBook Air; others insist that a smartphone-like device, similar to Apple’s iPhone, will be what the world carries in their pocket. Me? I’ll take the latter. Don’t get me wrong, I think that tomorrow’s laptops will be ultra-portable just like the Eee PC and the MacBook Air, or possibly even be similar to a UMPC. However, I have no doubt that people’s primary portable device will be a “SuperPhone.”

It simply makes more sense to just put a full (even more so than iPhone’s Mobile Safari) Web browser and, at least a somewhat more, complete operating system on a device like a cell phone that nearly three-hundred million people in the United States alone already carry with them on a regular basis. The iPhone actually comes very close to this. Essentially, all a phone would need to fulfill these requirements and be just as good as having a UMPC or Eee PC is to have all of the features of the iPhone, in addition to a full Web browser and a full OS. The key points that the current iPhone’s software lacks are the ability to view all of the Web 2.0 content on any page on the Internet, the ability to download any kind of file, including additional software, and, most importantly, the ability to easily develop and release applications for that device in order to expand its functionality. The operating system itself needs to be very flexible and easily allow features to be added via of 3rd-party software. The iPhone will be adding support for 3rd-party apps soon, but only from Apple approved developers. That’s not enough, anyone needs to be able to develop and release software apps for the devices. Of course, they also need to support much faster mobile broadband, which will come with 4th Generation wireless technologies, especially LTE (Long Term Evolution) around 2011.

I believe that within the next few years, we will see a major shift in the cell phone industry, which in part has already been sparked by the inception of the iPhone, toward devices that more and more resemble a mobile computer. They will have complete operating systems with many interesting (and some nearly useless) features just as desktop and laptop computers today, complete with full Internet browsers, and extensive third-party application support to enable even more features and mobile gaming. Ultra-fast wireless broadband will accompany this array of new features with speeds of 100 Mbps or more (12 times faster than the average fastest wired broadband of today). These new devices will also have elaborate touch screens which will provide a brilliant user experience. Anything you can do on a computer, you will be able to do on your cell phone, or whatever they end up being called. However, as cell phones resemble computers more and more, security risks increase, but I’ll save that for another day.