future of cell phones?

[ucjffj]

the advances made in cell phone technology are interesting. anyone in the know, have a sense of where things are heading?

as i understand it, we're at 2.5g. 3g in a few years with wcdma/cdma2000. biggest feature of 3g is video conferencing, as well as gps locating (driving directions or seeing where you and your friends are on a map). but what about beyond that? will cell phones be used as internet connection instead of cable/dsl/wimax? are cell phones and pda's likely to merge into 1 device? will network protocols (gsm, cdma) merge into 1 global standard or will there always be competing networks?

 

[Sensesfail182]

I assume they will be, there are many different directions the future of computers and the internet can go. I think that soon cell phone will be able to be as fast or even faster than a cable connection just may take a while, and may take some $$$.

 

[f95toli]

3G is already old news (it has been around for a couple of years where I live, in about a year or so 3G phones will sell better than GSM) so now the attention has shifted to 4G which will basically use the same type of technology but will be much faster (at least a few MB/s).

The problem is that 4G needs technology that does not really exist yet, 3G is already pushing the limits for what can be done using standard semiconductor technology (Si,.GaAs, GaN), this is good news for everyone working on novel materials.

 

[BW86]

Japan?s NTT DoCoMo is already doing tests for 4G. 300Mbps from a moving car, and the target is to achieve downstream speeds of 1Gbps when stationary. They are getting an average of over 100Mbps, you can basically stream HDTV to your phone.

 

[ucjffj]

Originally posted by: BW86
Japan?s NTT DoCoMo is already doing tests for 4G. 300Mbps from a moving car, and the target is to achieve downstream speeds of 1Gbps when stationary. They are getting an average of over 100Mbps, you can basically stream HDTV to your phone.

what's the point of anything faster than ~600kb?






this is interesting

Text

Manufacturers such as Samsung and Motorola have released devices that support both CDMA and GSM, the two incompatible back-end technologies used in the vast majority of cell phone networks worldwide.

 

[zpapasmurf]

Originally posted by: ucjffj

Originally posted by: BW86
Japan?s NTT DoCoMo is already doing tests for 4G. 300Mbps from a moving car, and the target is to achieve downstream speeds of 1Gbps when stationary. They are getting an average of over 100Mbps, you can basically stream HDTV to your phone.

what's the point of anything faster than ~600kb?






this is interesting

Text

Manufacturers such as Samsung and Motorola have released devices that support both CDMA and GSM, the two incompatible back-end technologies used in the vast majority of cell phone networks worldwide.

Bragging rights....

 

[SandInMyShoes]

Tested trial speeds almost never make it to market. I say go for all the speed you can get in the trials, and maybe it'll be acceptable when the real world sees it

Keep in mind that the speed they're getting to one person isn't going to be realistic when they get more people on a tower. Ideally, each tower needs to be capable of at least 20-30mbps for everyone, while keeping latency as low as possible. Maybe 4G will make a good mobile phone AND PC data bandwidth venue, but until then, Flash-OFDM and its siblings are looking pretty attractive. Pity that it appears like it won't be practical to use with phones.

 

[itachi]

as i understand it, we're at 2.5g. 3g in a few years with wcdma/cdma2000. biggest feature of 3g is video conferencing, as well as gps locating (driving directions or seeing where you and your friends are on a map). but what about beyond that? will cell phones be used as internet connection instead of cable/dsl/wimax?

i doubt it. eventually, wireless internet will become as widespread as cell phones.. and most likely they'll be integrated with cellphone towers.. but i doubt that they'll ever be dependant on cellphones.

are cell phones and pda's likely to merge into 1 device?

already done.

will network protocols (gsm, cdma) merge into 1 global standard or will there always be competing networks?

depends on how much longer the us holds out. gsm is the standard for practically everyone except the us. we may have it now.. but we're not even running at the same freq as everyone else.