The Future of Smartphones

Smart phones are getting thinner and cheaper, and as a result are entering the consumer market. For the past few years smart phones have been aimed at prosumers, or “professional consumers” (prosumers can also refer to “production consumers”, or consumers who drive the design, production and alteration of a product). Prosumers are generally early adopters of products. They have disposable income and great enthusiasm for particular products or technologies. Smart phone developers find prosumers very useful when designing applications and hardware. As prosumers pick and choose the phones that offer the applications they want, developers can tweak designs and move towards mass production. Analysts predict that one billion smart phone handsets will be sold by 2011. While input methods will vary, the research firm, forecasts that 38 percent of all mobile phones will use touch screens or touch panels by 2012. The iPhone uses an advanced touch screen, for example, and can even detect multiple points of contact simultaneously.

Security

Perhaps the most challenging consideration for the future is security. Smart phones and PDAs are already popular among many corporate executives, who often use their phones to transmit confidential information. Smart phones may be vulnerable to security breaches such as an Evil Twin attack. In an evil twin attack, a hacker sets a server’s service identifier to that of a legitimate hotspot or network while simultaneously blocking traffic to the real server. When a user connects with the hacker’s server, information can be intercepted and security is compromised.

One downside to the openness and configurability of smart phones is that it also makes them susceptible to viruses. Hackers have written viruses that attack Symbian OS phones. The viruses can do things like turning off anti-virus software, locking the phone completely or deleting all applications stored on the phone. On the other side, some critics argue that anti-virus software manufacturers greatly exaggerate the risks, harms and scope of phone viruses in order to help sell their software.

The incredible diversity in smart phone hardware, software and network protocols inhibit practical, broad security measures. Most security considerations either focus on particular operating systems or have more to do with user behavior than network security.

With data transmission rates reaching blistering speeds and the incorporation of WiFi technology, the sky is the limit on what smart phones can do. Possibly the most exciting thing about smart phone technology is that the field is still wide open. It's an idea that probably hasn't found its perfect, real-world implementation yet. Every crop of phones brings new designs and new interface ideas. No one developer or manufacturer has come up with the perfect shape, size or input method yet. The next "killer app" smart phone could look like a flip phone, a tablet PC, a candy bar or something no one has conceived of yet.