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Phones five years behind PCs
Phones are five to seven years behind PCs in terms of technology, according to Sony Ericsson's chief technology officer Mats Lindoff.
The Symbian smartphone show in London hasn't been a glamorous event these last two days, but Lindoff was a breath of fresh air as he predicted how mobile phones will change in the run up to 2012, visions that he has an authority on since he's actually involved in their development.
Lindoff said: "You might say you can take individual components – camera, handycam and so on – and put it into a phone, but in 5-7 years we can take everything and put it into the cell phone.
"The most important feature is the optical system on a camera. You can use low noise sensors but heavy mathematics will have to improve image quality"
Both HSDPA+ and Wimax sit on Sony Ericsson's roadmaps for 2008-2009, in a 10Mbit/sec and above category. But it's not download speeds that Lindoff thinks are important. He says upload speeds and latency is the most significant advance, citing latencies of 100ms achieved with HDSPA+ and Wimax, dropping to 50ms for LTE and UMB in 2012. "What does it mean? Well it means Skype works," said the flatly honest Lindoff.
I spoke to Lindoff after his presentation and he revealed Sony was a member of the Wimax consortium and he sees it as just another data pipe. Phone operators needn't worry about the competition since Wimax trials, in Sweden at least, are going poorly according to Sony Ericsson's top brass.
Lindoff's other predictions included GPS present in every phone and that by 2012 the mobile phone will be your remote control for every device at home using Wifi. He rubbished traditional TV appearing on mobile phones, instead suggesting personalised mobile TV is the only option.
He advocated open operating systems but said the cost and size of mobile phones would remain broadly the same. Battery capacity will go up by 40 per cent over the next five years, thanks to new lithium ion technologies though.
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