I bought a new phone on Monday. It’s the Android-powered Huawei U8100 offered by Wind Mobile, which is being sold for $160. I have to say, I’m pretty amazed what you can get for that much.
Let’s look at what this little device includes:
- A CPU (500MHz) and some RAM (128MB). This is equivalent to what you would find in a desktop computer ten years ago. A whole computer – in the palm of your hands.
- A GPS receiver. These used to cost hundreds of dollars and be bulky devices just a decade ago. Now this thing can provide turn-by-turn navigation with a pretty user interface.
- Wifi connectivity. This phone can latch onto a wireless network, so you can surf without using up your data plan.
- A bluetooth antenna. So this thing can communicate on three different levels: cellular, wifi, bluetooth. All in this little package.
- Tri-axis accelerometers. You can literally take gravity readings of where you are. Or know exactly what orientation the device is in.
- Tri-axis magnetometers. In layman’s terms: a built-in digital compass.
- A camera. It takes still pictures and videos.
- An FM radio. Why the heck not.
- And of course, a GSM modem, speaker, microphone, touch screen, and the other usual trimmings you’d expect from a phone.
All of this is pretty standard for a phone like this. But imagine trying to describe this device to someone from the eighties. Or heck, even the nineties. Technology has advanced by absolute leaps and bounds. And this is a low-end smart phone.
If you’re shopping for a new phone, I don’t know whether I’d recommend this one off the bat. In my case, I was looking for the cheapest device that would provide a good mobile web surfing experience. This delivered. It does browsing well, albeit with the third-party Opera browser instead of the one that’s bundled. It does email well. It handles YouTube videos with ease. There’s an app store that has tons of free programs and games for you to download.
That said, the low-resolution of the screen (320×240) means that you won’t have access to all the software on the Android app store. It also runs the last generation (2.1) of the Android OS, with no plans to provide an upgrade to the latest 2.2 Froyo build. The touch screen keyboard with predictive text doesn’t hold a candle to a physical keyboard.
Anywho, this post wasn’t really meant to be a review of the phone, so much as a statement that I can’t believe how much we can cram into these little things today. A desktop computer. In the palm of your hand. Amazing.
What will cellphones look like in ten years from now?
Comments
5 responses to “Technology is Amazing”
I guess this means my Motorola DynaTAC is outdated…
I’m eriously considering buying the phone but the resistive screen is holding me back. How’s the screen’s precision? Can you use the on-screen keyboard with no problem?
Nokia released a concept video for the Morph that had me captivated.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zto6aTZM9t0
That is probably what the future has in store for telecommunications.
Mereo: I thought the resistive screen would be a downer too. It’s not capacitive, so as you know, no multi-touch. My concerns there were unfounded. It works really well, and I don’t find myself missing the ability to pinch-to-zoom all that much.
The keyboard is a different story. A third-party software keyboard is included, with a button to switch between English and French predictive text. A swipe of the finger alternates the button layout between a standard QWERTY representation, a cellphone style T9, and something that’s in between (two letters per button, instead of the three with T9.)
In QWERTY mode, I do mistakes pretty regularly. Recalibrating the touch screen helped, but it still happens. I find myself using the T9 mode pretty often. The predictive text is pretty decent, and it keeps track of context – and so it can guess the next words that you’ll write.
In short: the keyboard isn’t that great, but it works. That said, I was using an iPhone today, and I found that it was pretty much the same. A hardware keyboard would be best.
I still say the couple of times I have actually called you and had nothing but noise, that’s a downside to all that tech in a telephone… :S