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Apple's iPhone is the beginning of a new direction in mobile phone development, rather than a full stop. Far away, Google's gPhone will soon follow, not to mention Nokia, Sumsung, Sony Ericsson, Moto and LG. These mobile phone manufacturers will never give up every inch of the market, and many domestic mobile phones. Vendors are also eager to try. The success of the iPhone has led us to a buzzing topic – what kind of mobile phone is the “perfect mobile phone†we expect?
The iPhone is beautiful but not perfect
Although the iPhone is beautiful, it is still far from perfect. For example, it is not only expensive, but also limited to AT&T's small EDGE network; if used outside the United States, the cost of data communication is even more alarming; the closure of its system limits developers to develop new applications, but It has aroused the desire of many hackers to attack. Although the above problems have been alleviated, such as the price has decreased, the software has improved, but Apple's idea of ​​earning excess profits through closed containment will certainly not change.
Who will fight the iPhone? Many people turned their attention to the Google GPhone. It is speculated that although the sensational effects in the market may be comparable, gPhone and iPhone are clearly in the design and market strategy. The iPhone pays attention to the fashion sense of design. The main attack is the high-end market with relatively high profits, and gPhone will pursue technical openness and the price will be civilian.
Few people pay attention to what software platform and technology is used by the iPhone, and the technical color of gPhone will be very strong, such as open source Linux operating system, J2ME middleware layer and Flash/Ajax display layer, and Skia company acquired by Google. Some kind of vector graphics technology developed. Such a software architecture is the ideal mobile phone technology architecture described by venture capitalist Simeon Simeonov. The technicalists always believe that the perfect mobile phone platform should be as open as possible, and should be the driving force of the "free economy" rather than the vanguard of monopolizing the economy. Just like the environment created by Google, let outstanding products and services stand out in full free competition.
Perfectly difficult to define
For different people, perfection obviously has different definitions. For telecom companies, the perfect mobile phone should be able to lock the user's door number with the phone and charge a high service fee from the user. Although mobile phone users and mobile phone developers have different definitions of perfect mobile phones, openness and free choice are their common aspirations. It is worth noting that the iPhone is clearly not an open model, but it can be used as an important reference frame for a perfect mobile phone. Following this line of thinking, if we look at the technical architecture, among the various mobile phone software platforms, the most noteworthy is Linux.
Linux is likely to be the fastest growing smartphone operating system. ABI Research pointed out that by 2012, the average annual compound growth rate of smartphones will reach 75%. In the meantime, the total shipment of smartphones will reach 331 million, of which the share of Linux-based mobile phones will reach 31%.
Apple's importance in the mobile phone market is becoming more and more obvious, but it is not closely related to technical characteristics, and more thanks to the business cooperation between Apple and telecom companies and media companies. This extremely closed business model earned Apple a much higher profit than its competitors. According to reports, 40% of the fees received by the Spanish telecommunications company's branch O2 from iPhone users were paid to Apple. The collaboration between Apple and Disney in content has made them almost monopolized in this market. However, Apple's practices have been increasingly criticized, which makes this business model more challenging. In contrast, the openness of Linux gives users more autonomy in content, while telecom operators and content providers are less likely to get excess profits.
For software developers, what they care about most is the ability to use software modules to command the hardware to perform their desired functions. For users, what they care most about is that the phone has enough capacity and speed to perform all kinds of desired work without restrictions and enjoy all kinds of desired services. From this perspective, a perfect mobile phone should have the best flexibility, and you can freely add or remove many functional modules.
In addition, the perfect phone should be very easy to control. The iPhone's touch screen is highly regarded, but it is not as easy to operate with one hand as the Treo. In addition, the front of the phone should also be equipped with a laser projection lens, which can project a standard size keyboard on the desktop and read the user's keystrokes when the phone is placed on the table. For mobile phone developers, the biggest challenge is not to achieve these functions, but to make the phone have all of these features without making it more than the size and weight of the laptop, while the battery can only support 30 minutes.
Linux carries the last hope
The perfect phone should be a small computer. It should be pre-installed with basic operating systems and applications just like a normal PC, allowing users to assemble different functions according to their needs. Obviously, it is not easy to make a mobile phone as flexible and convenient as a PC to install and uninstall a functional module. Commercially, the constraints on the way users use telecom operators may be the biggest obstacle. But technically, the interoperability of mobile application software with different operating system platforms is the biggest problem - a mobile application can't run normally on all mobile phones. This problem has caused many users to see some favorite applications but is plagued by compatibility. Also affected are software developers who must develop different versions of the application for different phones.
Symbian was originally formed by several vendors worried that Microsoft would monopolize the mobile operating system market. However, the monopoly of Symbian in the smartphone operating system market has recently caused concern among operators, especially the mobile phone leader Nokia. Dare to be small. From the current situation, Linux is almost the last chance to prevent Microsoft and Nokia from monopolizing the smartphone market. However, the unique advantage of Linux - the choice of freedom has brought challenges to standardization. The extent to which the unified norms of Linux development should be managed is also worthy of attention. However, it is obvious that the most pressing issue facing Linux is not to restrict centralization, but to promote the establishment of a unified specification that will enable it to compete with Microsoft's Windows Mobile, Nokia-backed Symbian, and Apple. The LiMo Foundation was established to solve this problem.
The LiMo Foundation aims to build an open mobile software platform through a balanced, transparent process that includes API interface specifications, architectural systems, open source references, source code updates based on reference tool components, and third-party software reference specifications. Recently, the LiMo Foundation has expanded further, with new core members including Aplix, Celunite, LG Electronics, McAfee and Wind River.
If you look at Linux from the perspective of market competition, you should obviously look at the mobile phone industry giants. However, if you look at the development trend of mobile Linux platforms from a technical perspective, you should pay special attention to the professional Linux platform vendors in the LiMo Foundation. Wind River is the first commercial-grade Linux platform and tool provider for the LiMo Foundation, and MontaVista, another important mobile Linux platform provider, has joined LiMo as an ordinary member. The founding and core members of the LiMo Foundation will jointly develop an open mobile Linux platform system that integrates advanced development tools. Other work plans include reducing the fragmentation of mobile Linux development and expanding the mobile Linux developer collaboration system.
A shortcut to designing the perfect phone
Standardization and interoperability are of course a big problem that Linux must face as a mobile software platform, but this is obviously not the whole problem. On the whole, fast-starting capabilities, minimal storage space, unique features, and rapid time to market are the most fundamental issues.
Take Wind River as an example. Its recently released high-performance commercial-grade Linux version can better solve the above basic problems and will become the new standard for mobile Linux platforms through the LiMo Foundation. The newly released Wind River Linux is based on the 2.6.21 Linux kernel and provides 64-bit application support, including cross-debug tools for Kernel and application space. The 64-bit environment is becoming the mainstream of embedded Linux, and the release of this version fits this trend.
For consumer electronics such as single-core mobile phones, it is necessary to support end-user applications such as baseband protocols and streaming media, all of which require very strong real-time performance. Even in the extreme pressure of cost and time to market, this real-time nature can not be discounted.
Linux itself is just a software platform, and software development tools are the key to taking advantage of this platform.
How can mobile phone manufacturers launch the closest mobile phone at the lowest cost and fastest speed? This requires not only advanced platforms and development tools, but also development experience in device software. Google's gPhone gives people the expectation of a perfect phone, and the many advantages of platforms such as Wind River Linux make the road to perfect mobile more convenient.
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