Remember Windows XP? We certainly do. Think back to the days of noisy hard-drives and floppy disks clicking away. Have a guess what sort of power was inside the average PC back then?

Take a peek at the Windows XP system requirements and you might get an idea. The whole OS itself takes around about 1.5GB to install, needs just 64MB of RAM to run and a whole 233MHz of CPU power to kick the operating system into gear. This now seems like nothing, but think back to what you could do with Windows XP. At launch it was a formidable piece of software and has been used as a standard PC OS up until very recently.

Compare this with a smartphone's current hardware setup. All that power in your pocket starts to seem a bit unnecessary. Sure, browsing the web is quicker and gaming looks a lot better, but do we really need a quad-core processor sat in our mobiles, or even a dual-core one?

In the past three years or so there has been a drastic jump in the amount of processing power seen in phones.?When Apple announced the original iPhone in 2007, no one could have guessed how successful it would be. The market was a relatively stable place dominated by a select few manufacturers. The problem was that the smartphones available just weren't that smart. Apple stopped everyone dead in its tracks with an unparalleled user experience and highly innovative piece of hardware design. The competition needed something to compete with it and out came Android.

From the outset Android was a fundamentally power hungry OS. It likes to have lots of processing speed and RAM to keep running along smoothly and it was Qualcomm's Snapdragon platform that was the first to step up and provide it. Like a PC compared to a Mac, it's become a spec-fest: the more, the merrier.?

Couple that with the fact that, to market Android handsets properly, manufacturers needed to pick at something that Apple couldn’t compete with and it quickly became speed that would define a handset’s success. The Google Nexus One was the starting gun and it hasn't stopped since.

This will be the year of the quad-core smartphone. Will that bring anything new to our mobile experience? We doubt it. Sure, things might get even faster, but Android is still Android, iOS still iOS and apps are still apps. Games might look better, cameras might get more resolution, we may even finally see WP7 get some multi-core action on the go.

The problem is that none of it will make much difference to the fundamental smartphone experience, short of making handset batteries run out quicker. Google Maps will get us to the same place fine on an old Android phone as it does on an iPhone 4S. We can play Angry Birds just the same on both and even send an email as quick as the network will let allow.

The core smartphone experiences aren’t governed by the amount of power you have available. They are driven by the applications designed around them. Dropping the obsession with power makes coding for multiple handsets easier and results in something as slick and easy to use as Windows Phone 7.

Like the megapixel battle in both compact cameras and feature phones before that, speed has become the new USP for smartphones with processor cores the latest battleground. Just as 16 megapixels was ultimately useless without a high grade lens in front of it, loads of cores are pointless without very demanding apps. These just aren’t commonplace and those which do exist bring virtually no benefit to the base smartphone experience.

Android and iOS could do with taking a leaf out of Microsoft’s book, as bizarre as that may sound. Dropping the focus on power and shifting towards creating a rich user experience based around the fundamentals of a smartphone would be of benefit to everyone. Concentrate on the areas that count and we could have?more interaction between handsets via technologies like NFC; ease of connectivity and a more reliable battery life, the last of which is going to be the only thing can derail this runaway train. When battery technology simply can't keep up, the mobile makers will have to turn its attentions elsewhere.

All the time that manufacturers are trying to outsell each other they are looking for ways to draw customers into their hardware and nothing is easier than whacking a great big processor inside and saying it's the most powerful phone you can buy. It's certainly an easier sell than trying to push a top end user experience through advertising.

In the end, of course, the public will get wise to the what it's being told is the new black. Just as your cameraphone's megapixels became less relevant, so this game of processor Top Trumps will eventually give as it creeps towards the ridiculous - something that looks likely for 2012. But if you're thinking that that will be the end of the silliness, then think again. With pixel density and screen size shooting up, it's your mobile's display that's fast becoming the next battleground, and where it goes beyond there is anybody's guess, but we're pretty sure it won't be something as practical but unsexy as battery life.

Tags: Phones Mobile phones Android ios WP7 Features Comment

Aren't smartphones fast enough? originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:58:00 +0000

The Lytro camera that allows you to focus well after the moment you press the shutter button on your digital camera might be one of the most exciting innovations to happen to the world of photography since the first digital camera in 1975, however, to say that it is going to be included in the next iPhone or iPhone after that is stuff of make believe and wishful thinking.

In an extract from an upcoming book by Fortune magazine's Adam Lashinsky, called Inside Apple, Lashinsky talks about how the CEO and inventor of Lytro met with Steve Jobs before his death to talk about the new technology:

"The company’s CEO, Ren Ng, a brilliant computer scientist with a PhD from Stanford, immediately called Jobs, who picked up the phone and quickly said, 'if you’re free this afternoon maybe we would could get together.' Ng, who is 32, hurried to Palo Alto, showed Jobs a demo of Lytro’s technology, discussed cameras and product design with him, and, at Jobs’s request, agreed to send him an email outlining three things he’d like Lytro to do with Apple."

That has immediately got the Apple blogs excited and desperate to write headlines along the lines of "Next Apple iPhone to get Lytro tech".

We don't deny that Steve Jobs met with Ren Ng before his death last year, but having played with an early prototype of the Lytro camera in San Francisco in 2011, just after the camera's launch, it is fair to say that the technology is far from ready to make it into something as mainstream as the iPhone let alone any smartphone based on what we've seen.

One day, yes; within the next 3 years, highly unlikely. Why? Frankly there are just too many hurdles to make it a reality right now.

The first is the size of the sensor and the lens needed to take the photographs in the first place. The Lytro camera, a rather strange rectangular shape, is smaller than your traditional compact. However, it isn't as small as a phone and it requires a large sensor shape and deep lens to garner all that information on fields of light. The shape and size just isn't smartphone form factor friendly. That's not to say it isn't possible in the future but, if they were that close to creating something for a phone, then why make the Lytro camera such an unusual shape?

Then there is the resolution of the photos themselves. Snap a picture with the Lytro and you get a 1.2-megapixel (1,080 x 1,080) snap and that is far below the current offering phone users are used to. That's a big drop in the quality stakes and one that many would unlikely want to opt for.?The Lytro's pictures are fun but they certainly aren't up going to be up to scratch with the 8-megapixel offering in the current iPhone 4S.

Even after you've got over all the technical difficulties, there is the social issue. Currently you can only share and edit Lytro pictures with the company's own software and own editing app.

That means no uploading to Facebook, no uploading to Twitter, no uploading to anywhere unless you created the dedicated software to do it. Now that's not implausible, but can you really see that happening overnight with the support of companies like Instagram, Flickr, and others? Here at Pocket-lint we can't see it until Lytro starts to become a force in its own right and more people have had a chance to use the system and for it to prove its worth.

Finally there is Apple itself. One of the biggest reasons we don't believe Lytro will be on the iPhone 5 or iPhone 6 for that matter is the simple fact that Apple does not embrace new technologies.

Don't get us wrong, the iPhone is an amazing piece of kit, however nothing in the iPhone is new bleeding edge technology. There are faster processors, better cameras, better screens, better almost everything available on the market elsewhere and that's because the iPhone isn't about specs. It's about experience and it is about letting people enjoy the current tech in a great way rather than becoming a guinea pig for new, unproven technology.

Sadly Lytro, while amazing, is too new, is too untested, and ultimately too much of a pipedream at the moment.

Sorry Apple fans, waiting for Lytro to make it to the iPhone any time soon would be like waiting for scientists to create the unicorn.

Tags: Phones iPhone 4S iPhone 5 Apple Lytro Comment Features

Lytro in the iPhone, not so fast originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 24 Jan 2012 14:00:00 +0000