Device Technology

Justin Champion

Room C208 - Tel: 3273www.staffs.ac.uk/personal/engineering_and_technology/jjc1

PCS – New Technology

ContentsOperators offering value added servicesChanging use of mobile devicesDevice TechnologyMobile Applications

PCS – New Technology

Operators recognised that data services could make them money 02 worldwide got 17.3% of there income from data transfer

(www.mmo2.com/docs/media/financial_performance_preliminary3.html, 2003)

Mostly from SMS usage, but this will change E-commerce is the most likely reason for a change

Using a phone like a credit card Possibly e-voting

(news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3300425.stm, 2003) Elections could be help more regularly if it was cheaper and easier to hold them

To increase this the devices will have to become more capable

PCS – New Technology

Changes will need to take place in Displays Processing Operating Systems Ability to receive data at the correct rate

PCS – New Technology

Displays The ultimate aim is to provide the information in a clear

manner with the minimum of battery usage With the increased use of photo quality images a full palette of

colours must be capable of being displayed The resolution must be suitable for close proximity usage

Most devices will be held in the hand when being used A number of technologies have emerged as potential solutions

PCS – New Technology Displays Continued

Liquid Crystal Displays Passive Matrix Active Matrix Thin Film Transistor (TFT)

These displays are capable Using low power Displaying at least 64,000 colours Refreshing at a rate for 15 frames a sec with MPEG

25 is the standard frame rate Future general public (In research use now)

ThinCRT Light Emitting Polymers

Plastics which produce light when an electrical charge is put into them Phillips should have released a version now! Cambridge are carrying out research on this

(http://www.cdtltd.co.uk/, 2004)

PCS – New Technology

Device Capabilities Technology is moving away from a device that contains all that it

needs to work Now the user has a base set of functionality anything additional can then

be transferred into the device This allows the customisation of the device with only that which is

required. The first step to this is to create an Operating System (OS) that

supports add-ons. Each device will only have the functionality that it requires and this

can change over time A potential “All in one device” PDA, Phone, Fax machine, games, web

surfing, etc. These are here now and will be demonstrated during this course

PCS – New Technology

Operating System Modular design to allow faster development times Each layer can only communicate with the layer next to it

Device Hardware

Operating System

Java Virtual Machine

J2ME Program C++ ProgramUser

PCS – New Technology Current Device OS’s

Symbian, (PSION) Open source anyone can develop for them At this time Symbian is the market leader with new 2.5/3G phones Supported by Nokia and other major manufacturers

(http://www.canalys.com/pr/r2004011.htm, 2004) Palm OS (PSION) Windows Smartphone (Microsoft) Windows Mobile 2003 (Microsoft)

Controlled developments by Microsoft Other contenders for future consideration

Linux (Red Hat) Openwave Savaje

Future Although devices are hoping to share a single transmission medium the

development for these devices will be more problematic There will be no single defining OS for devices

PCS – New Technology

Current Device OS’s Developing application can take place in

C++ Most manufacturers provide the SDK’s to allow this Issues around the application working on more than one device though

Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) All of the current OS’s support this language In theory a program written once can run on all devices

Reality might be slightly different Microsoft .NET

Only works on the Microsoft based devices These are limited at the moment

A question could be How long before someone develops a virus for a 3G phone ?

PCS – New Technology

Battery Life The more the processor does and the better the graphics on the

display the more battery power this takes A fine line needs to be agreed between quality and battery

It is no use having 16 million colours if the battery lasts only a few hours The increased functionality will mean an increase in processor & memory

use You can no longer put everything that you want to do in hardware, which is

more power efficient Early 3G experiments in Japan gave the devices a 1 hour battery life

(http://www.iapplianceweb.com/story/OEG20021026S0017, 2003)

Battery size and weight The physical size of battery can not change and neither can the weight as

the user expects a certain size of device

PCS – New Technology

Current Battery Technology All battery types work in the same way the only change is the metals

used to produce the electrons Nickel-Cadmium (NiCd) Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH)

Suffers from a memory effect and is not widely used now Lithium-ion battery (LiOn)

Future Batteries Fuel Cell

Predicted for production in industrial mobile devices by early 2004 Instead of recharging the fuel will be replaced in the device

The fuel could be either Methanol or Hydrogen This method will work like a rechargeable cigarette lighter

PCS – New Technology

Other battery saving techniques All of the OS’s have built into them that the device will turn off when not

used except for the transmission of phone data. Certain parts of the device are defined as not essential and will be switched

off Processors when not fully required will slow down the clock speed to reduce

the power drain As a part of 3G standards the device have built in power controllers for

transmissions This means that as you are closer to the base station the amount of power used

for your transmissions will be reduced The benefits of this technique are more than battery related as will be discussed

in a future week We have already looked at the improving situation with the display

screens which take a lot of power

PCS – New Technology

Other battery saving techniques ARM processors released in October 2003

Have built into them “Intelligent Energy Manager” This works out how much processor is required for a instruction and

reduces the power to the processors accordingly

PCS – New Technology

Ability to receive data at the correct rate This will be discussed in detail in future weeks

PCS – New Technology Applications

With the increased computing power uses need to be developed

The communications with a device are referred to as Push/Pull

Push Information is sent unsolicited to the user

This is starting now, with Orange sending out messages Soon junk (SPAM) text messages will become popular

Pull Information which you specially request

PCS – New Technology Push Services

The same as email in reality but a little more personalised A mobile device is aware of its current location

This is a requirement in the US with the Emergency (E-911) law The emergency services need to know to within 50 metres the

location of a device

Location based services These services have a good use, they can also be used for

commercial benefits Services can be directed to you based on where you are “Tell me where the nearest Chinese restaurant is?”

The phone then has the capability to show you a map of your current location and the destination

This is the logical upgrade to the Yellow Page services

PCS – New Technology Location Based continued

As you walk past a shop the latest offers can be transferred into your phone.

This would rely on a profile being setup that tells the shop that you are interested in such items

Issues need considering like personal privacy Do you want anyone to know where you are currently located What else will be done with this information? Becomes a issue of the data protection act

Does a phone number stored breach the Data Protection Act ? They have nothing personal on you if the receiving company

does not store personal details against this phone number

PCS – New Technology Pull Services

These you would register for or you physically request at the time.

The previous example of the restaurant is a pull service Football results service is a popular current service

Future usage In the future companies are hoping that an increased

video use will increase revenues Football highlights sent directly to your phone

PCS – New Technology Football highlights

This will become a issue when large numbers of people start to watch these video sequences

Consider if England won the world cup how many people would pay to see the actual goal !

An Israeli company is working on a fix for this The build up to the goal as in the 15 seconds before would be

sent as vectors You would see the details of the goal as though it is a computer

game Just before the actual goal the action would change to real video

footage to show the goal and just after This will save massive amounts of the data on the networks

New 3G devices all have full capability to render vector based graphics in real time with the minimum of the data transferred

PCS – New Technology Application possibility

Any application available on a PC can be done a mobile device

The number of applications is limitless As application become more demanding the capabilities

of the devices will increase Considerations always need to be given to

Battery life Memory capacity Usability with the current small screens Input into the device

PCS – New Technology

Input new device Tracks the movement of your fingers

Costs $100, plugs into any USB device Requires a stable surface to work

PCS – New Technology Summary

Why we need advanced devices Available Devices

What they support Operating Systems Battery Saving Options Ubiquitous Computing Uses of the services

Push Pull