Tomi T Ahonen has penned a very interesting essay on how Nokia is now the world's biggest computer maker with 14% market share, as evidenced by 2008 sales. Tomi takes time to fully justify the inclusion of top end smartphones in the 'computer' category - some great reading here, including nuggets such as the Nokia N82 being as powerful as the Cray 2 supercomputer.
Read on in the full article.
Well, this is where the whole definition of computer starts to become meaningless really because devices are overlapping so much in functionality.
If you attach TV Out and a keyboard to a portable smartphone or PDA, it becomes pretty much the same as a basic computer. But if you never do that, if you just use it for calls and browsing, is it a computer?
Coming at it from another angle, I have an EEE PC 900 running Linux which would fit most people's definition of a computer, yet there is no easy or official method of installing software onto the EEE PC 900. As you can only use the built-in software, is that really a computer in the same sense as a more conventional PC?
Whatever definition you come up with, there will always be exceptions, so the whole definition of computer market share may become less and less useful. Even phone market share may not be easy to define in the future as more people use VOIP through alternative networks such as wi-fi and wimax.
Tzer2...but surely you're able to connect to repository of literally THOUSANDS of apps? What Linux distribution do you use? Does the stock distro not have a package manager?
You can argue that a smartphone isn't a proper computer because it is not used to host it's own development system. This makes it less powerful than a computer that hosts it's own development system, because such a computer can be used to add more software capabilities by programming it.
In other words, a smartphone is as limited as all other embedded computer systems like the ones powering a car or a washing machine.
Nothing prevents, technically, hosting the smartphone development environment (compiler and other build tools) on the smartphone itself, as it has a display, memory, storage space, processor, keyboard.
However, it is essentially impractical to do so on a washing machine or a microwave oven.
From that perspective, a smarthone is not a similar embedded computer system as a washing machine.
Calling phones computers is a colossal joke or a misunderstanding at best.
Hey, my toilet can flush itself, can I call it a computer?
Can you reprogram your toilet? Can you develop and install new software for it?
Challenge to all the idiots out there who are calling phones computers: try opening an 18MB .pdf file on your Nokia E71 and then tell me if you still want to call phones computers. Thanks.
The fact that Adobe (or anyone) didn't write a proper PDF reader is no proof that the phone isn't a computer.
Would the device suddenly become a computer if someone wrote a better PDF reader?
Also: It still display bigger PDF files than your toilet. 😉
Try opening an 18MB PDF file on an old school 486SX25... but that's considered a computer (even though it's old and outdated). You'll have an utter fail.
Oh, and I just opened a 20mb Excel spreadsheet on my HTC Fuze...
The point of it is definitions can get hazy, and that 'your' definition may vary, and someone needs to decide what that official definition is for today... and hopefully tomorrow... but not necessarily yesterday
Tzer2...but surely you're able to connect to repository of literally THOUSANDS of apps? What Linux distribution do you use? Does the stock distro not have a package manager?
The apps exist, but there's no official way of installing them on an EEE PC 900. Asus forgot to include any kind of built in installer application.
The 900 uses a customised version of Xandros, but set up in such a way that user interaction is kept to a minimum (for example you can't even delete any desktop icons in the GUI, and the language selection screen is hidden from the user and can only be activated through some obscure command line instructions).
Unofficially you can fiddle about with the command line to try and install software, but it's a very complicated process and not something that most users would ever be able to do. In fact even finding the command line is quite difficult.
Some of the later EEE PC models do have an app installer, but not the 900.
Calling phones computers is a colossal joke or a misunderstanding at best.Hey, my toilet can flush itself, can I call it a computer?
You can't connect a toilet to a monitor and keyboard. You can't do word processing on a toilet. You can't install software or watch videos or surf the web or edit videos.
The reason phones and computers are starting to be talked about in similar terms is because they do similar things.
This photo should show you what I mean:
Now imagine that with a higher resolution output (such as that on the 5800 or N97) and a proper pointing device (such as a mouse)... in effect that would be virtually identical to the computing experience on a mini-laptop. If TV Out and pointing device compatibility become common, then practically every phone could be turned into a computer by just attaching it to a television set.
Arthur wrote:Challenge to all the idiots out there who are calling phones computers: try opening an 18MB .pdf file on your Nokia E71 and then tell me if you still want to call phones computers. Thanks.
This is a bit of a plug, but I have opened bigger PDF files with my own program Pdf+ on the E61 and E90.
I have also managed to open an 18Mb and over using a Nokia 9500 and PDF+!!
Tzer2 wrote:You can't do word processing on a toilet. You can't install software or watch videos or surf the web or edit videos.
Actually I frequently do word processing / surf the web / play computer games on the toilet. OK, I'm interphasing with my Nokia E71 but . . . 😉
Actually I frequently do word processing / surf the web / play computer games on the toilet. OK, I'm interphasing with my Nokia E71 but . . . 😉
I stand corrected... 😊
Actually we did a survey on All About N-Gage asking where people played N-Gage games the most, and I think "on the toilet" was the second most popular response!
Nokia need to:
a.) Accept they make computers, or things that have one of their use cases as computers
b.) Therefore add bluetooth mouse support to the OS - it would make a BIG difference
c.) Allow apps to use TV out at higher res. than 320 X 240. Gallery does it. RealPlayer does it. No one else does. Why not? Are the APIs hidden? What's going on? It should be 640 X 480 at least!
It should be 640 X 480 at least!
TV Out on the recently released 5800 is 640 x 360 as standard (because that's the screen resolution), so they're definitely getting there.
Bluetooth mouse support should be possible already if they would bother to write an app to support it. And future versions of Symbian will apparently have USB hosting ability so a USB mouse (and keyboard) might become possible too.
Some of this things has been evaluated in a very promising way already, if you search for the publications. What's about having a TFT + keyboard at home, and e.g. a high-resolution head-up display (powered by the phone) when travelling or for emerging countries if mains is unavailalbe? You'll do predominantely creative tasks when you've e.g. the keyboard connected, and consuming tasks if you've any HD display alone.
The Nokia Research guys elaborated this, and demonstrated that this works efficiently:
noBounds! project:
symbianwebblog.wordpress.com/2008/03/15/nobounds-expand-your-mobile-phones-display-to-a-hd-resolution/
This Video is quite intriguing. A remote GUI assembly with media decoding seems very feasible and a very realistic partitioning for mobile devices.
Processing power: The ARM Cortex based OMAP3 is much more efficient than an Intel Atom for the same application (e.g. HD Video recording & playback).
The lead is much bigger for web-browsing due to the >100 times idle power consumption relevant most of the time while browsing!
Whitepaper: focus.ti.com/pdfs/wtbu/ti_mid_whitepaper.pdf
Beagleboard: youtube.com/watch?v=cXr-D1wROfQ
nVidea Tegra: nvidia.com/object/product_tegra_600_us.html
Appearently the exisiting and even more the possibe mobile device platforms are more than powerful enough to handle PC like applications. Even fancy 3D interfaces are supported. What's next?
Are smartphones computers? Yes, by capabilities. Some even use them. But if 90% of PC buyers would not use the computer capabilities but use them as paper weights, would you be proud of this as a PC manufacturer? 90% of smartphone users do not use the phones as smartphones, but as dump phones. So I woudn't make a big fuss of being a largest computer manufacturer if I were Nokia, considering this....
Whats really needed is some sort of docking station. Rather than having to plug in power, mouse, keyboard, screen. 2 of those you could get away with using BT though.
Me? Id love to ditch the laptop and just use my phone. I could do it too, as long as it supported a decent res on output.
However I use dual monitors at work, Im not sure how long support for this would take!
Still, with proper display and input devices, it's possible to use it for work etc. Remote desktop, putty, VNC, office apps, need I go on?
Unregistered wrote:Are smartphones computers? Yes, by capabilities. Some even use them. But if 90% of PC buyers would not use the computer capabilities but use them as paper weights, would you be proud of this as a PC manufacturer? 90% of smartphone users do not use the phones as smartphones, but as dump phones. So I woudn't make a big fuss of being a largest computer manufacturer if I were Nokia, considering this....
Are the majority of PCs used to their capability? i would wager the majority of PCs sold to consumers these days are used for email and browsing, with a subset also being used for other internet comms, another subset for gaming/media consumption and another subset for "office" type activities. (NB these are intersecting subsets) A vanishingly small proportion are used for their other capabilities. Now consider smartphones: the vast majority are used for voice and text comms, an increasing subset for browsing/other 'net access, a similarly increasing subset for media consumption/gaming and a small (but still increasing) subset for other applications (office, finance, navigation etc). As people realise they have the capability, these various subsets will grow.
I fully agree with the conclusion that smartphones are computers. In fact, I have been saying for several years that my E61 is certainly my favorite portable computer, and quite possibly my favorite computer of all types.
There is some justification for this conclusion on my part:
- Symbian OS was created by Psion, who I understand were once the world's largest manufacturer of portable computers (a number of which I have and like).
- I have a personal collection of probably well over 1000 computers, and the E61 outperforms the vast majority of them in countless ways.
- With the exception of the time I am forced to use a desktop PC at work, most of my computer usage is on my E61 (email, web browsing, and numerous other activities which surely fall squarely in the domain of computing tasks).
So, I say, Way To Go Nokia!