The phone market gets smarter

Although the majority of Americans still have regular “feature” cell phones (i.e. not a smartphone), Nielsen Wire is reporting that the number of smartphone users is growing so much so that by the end of 2011, half of the country will be smartphone users.

This probably isn’t a surprise to anyone. Smartphones are a newer a better technology and the longer it’s around, the more people are going to buy. What Nielsen doesn’t report on is how many smartphones are being made. After all, 21 percent have smartphones right now compared to 14 percent a year earlier. But how many more different types of smartphones are available now as compared to a year ago?

Not only is quantity contributing to the ever-increasing rise of smartphone users, but price is a huge factor. I’m a Verizon customer (thus, no iPhone for me), and if I’m going to buy a smartphone I can get the Samsung Omnia from as low as $9.99. The Droid Eris is $79.99 and the BlackBerry Storm 2 is $99.99. Overall there are 14 Verizon phones for under $100 (all of these prices include two-year contracts).

My next phone (when I get the money for it)

And other carriers aren’t skimping on smartphones for under $100: Sprint and AT&T both have nine each. The more inexpensive smartphones get, the more people who are going to buy them. The option is basically buying a smartphone for, say, $49.99 where you have the option of downloading apps and browsing the Web, or spending the same amount of money and not being able to do that.

Yes, smartphones do cost more per month. That’s where they get people. I’ve seen it happen to myself and my friends. What happens is that you get hooked on using those extra features.

While smartphone growth has been steadily increasing, Nielsen is showing that the country is getting hooked on smartphones. It’s expected that the amount of smartphone users will start growing more rapidly.

By 2012 there will be more smartphone in the market than feature phones.

Google is usually right, but not this time

Making predictions about technology is hard. Remember Back to the Future? In the second movie kids had hovering skateboards. Ever watched The Jetsons? According to that show by the year 2062 people had flying cars and buildings were extremely high up on the top of poles. I have faith technology and innovation but I doubt any of that will come to pass in 52 years.

Making predictions can come back to bite you in the ass, as Farhad Manjoo pointed out in his Slate piece: That Whole Internet Thing’s Not Going to Work Out. Basically, someone wrote in Newsweek that the Internet was never going to become used widely by the public. Well things changed a lot in just a few years.

Google’s sales chief, made the grand statement that desktops will be irrelevant in three years. While I firmly believe that desktops e-readers share the same fate, I don’t think three years is long enough. All the companies that have thousands of desktops will have to replace all of them. Yes, more people are using laptops and smartphones and soon iPads and other tablets. And while, according to Manjoo, you should never “underestimate people’s capacity for change,” I think three years is pushing change a little quickly.

Maybe 10 years down the line desktops will become irrelevant. The majority of people will have to have strayed from desktops for his prediction to be true and I just don’t see that happening. Many people have both a desktop and a laptop. And while desktop sales might begin to stagnate, it won’t be until enough are going unsold that companies stop producing as many or any that I would feel they are “irrelevant.”

I think Google’s prediction of desktops is probably overstating and more wishful thinking on the company’s part since they stated they are going a more mobile route. It is beneficial to them if their three-year prediction comes true, after all.

How many more years do you think desktops have left?

Texting can cause health issues

Getting headaches? Neck pain? You may not be surprised to learn that if you spend too much time texting or on a handheld device you may acquire these symptoms. After all, if you spend a lot of time, head bowed down, staring at a small electronic screen, you’re bound to feel the effects. They are also slight disturbances for some people. Pop an Advil and you’ll feel better.

But what about loss of lung capacity? Spine degeneration? These issues are a little more serious. And they are entirely possible side effects to too much time spent on your smartphone or e-reader or whatever small device you use. According to CBS 2 News, they’re calling it “text neck” but I think it’s easy to realize that texting is not the only thing that might cause these problems.

We all love mobile technology, or else, why are you here? But the fact remains that right now it’s hurting us. I don’t mean financially. I mean physically.

Using mobile technology is hurting people's posture and their health

“I personally feel this is going to be the epidemic because everyone young and old is using some kind of hand-held,” said Dr. Dean Fishman, a chiropractor in Plantation, Fla., to CBS 2 News.

An epidemic. That sounds awfully ominous. Or it could be evolution. There was talk that all the texting we do will cause our thumbs to evolve. Maybe our bodies will evolve to make using technology more comfortable. Maybe thousands of years in the future we’ll be more hunch backed. It’s not pretty, but if it helps us do things easier, better and faster, well, isn’t that what evolution is all about?

Google plans to translate speech

There are already ways to translate text from one language to another (something I took way too much advantage of in high school), and Google already has a way to transcribe speech into text. So, logically, the next step is to combine the two. For the longest time, however, the idea of a device that translates say, Polish into English seemed more like sci-fi than anything else (re: Babel Fish from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy).

I’ve always been horrible at learning a new language. For example, although I took Italian in high school, middle school and college for a combined five and a half years, I cannot speak it. I can barely B.S. my way through it. This may have been my fault, of course it may have been my lax public middle school and my tired high school Italian teacher. Who knows? What I do know is that it’s unfair when a large majority of my friends speak two languages fluently and are decent at a third. And then there’s one friend who speaks, at last tally, five languages.

The point is, it was a bad experience and now I’m struggling to learn Polish (I can say colors, numbers and for some reason Rosetta Stone thought mezczyzna upada, which means “the man falls,” was important to learn). It might be rude, but having this Google translator on a smartphone would really help get togethers with my soon-to-be in-laws when they all sit around speaking Polish and I can understand one in every 20 words.

The Google translator could be revolutionary at breaking down the language barrier, but only if it’s available to everyone. After all, if I’m in Poland, it doesn’t do me much to understand what my relatives are saying but unable to respond in a way they can understand. So let’s hope that either people (and here I mean Americans mostly) get their acts together and start learning a foreign language or two, or that translators of this ilk become pretty commonplace.

Medicine and smartphones pt. 2

Never again do patients have to worry about their doctors being unavailable. Never again do med students have to worry about not having the right answer.

It’s hard to imagine that doctors still carry around pagers, a device that’s all but extinct, but it’s unfortunately true. Thankfully, smartphones have begun to replace the outdated gadgets and are using a technology that’s far more useful. Sure the smartphone can relay messages, but they are much more complex than that. The great thing about smartphones are the screens. Doctors can now receive EKGs on their smartphones and diagnose a patient. It’s no longer necessary for a doctor to log in to a computer to access the files he or she needs. A patient’s information is sent directly to the doctor.

Some people might worry about the screen size, though. Let’s face it, smartphones have small screens that make reading a trial let along looking at an important images and information to diagnose a potentially serious issue. Fear not. Tests have shown that doctors have accurately read the data 90 percent of the time, which is equal to live readings.

One issue with this convenience is the convenience. Do you really want your doctor taking a look at your information and diagnosing you while stuck in traffic? Or on a bathroom break at a family dinner? Doctors might be tempted to diagnose while distracted.

Med students on the other hand won’t have to worry about running out of the room to double-check something before they tell a patient. Learning is hard. It becomes even harder when the information isn’t readily available. Students can continue speaking with patients while they look something up. But, there’s a downside as always with this new technology. As a patient you’ll just have to trust that the student attending to you is working and not playing on the his or her smartphone.

Medicine and smartphones pt. 1

The more apps there are for smartphones the more convenient those inconviences in life become. Now you can use your smartphone to make doctors’ visits easier.

Going to the doctor is often a hassle, especially if you visit multiple doctors. With certain apps doctors can simply share medical records and doctors and patients can correct errors in these records with little to no hassle. Blue Cross sent out an app to more than 5,000 patients so they can carry their medical information and history with them.

Other apps all prescriptions to be sent from the doctor to drugstores, both chains and independent pharmacies. No more dropping off the prescription and hanging around Walgreen’s or waiting to get a call for the medicine to be ready for pick up. You can use apps to make sure there won’t be any adverse interactions between medicines or that allergies won’t be an issue.

Diabetics can even use an app to keep track of what they eat, blood sugar and insulin intake thanks to an undergraduate at Princeton University who wrote the app with his brother. The app takes the information inputed and then graphs the data. Thanks to a recent grant, the app should soon be able to be shared over the Internet so doctors can access the information and help patients.

E-mail money

PayPal has become a popular way of paying for purchases online. Most sellers on eBay or Etsy want buyers to send money through the e-commerce site. Now that idea is become more evolved so that people can send money to e-mail addresses or cell phone numbers. PayPal already lets users e-mail money.

According to Business Week, PNC, Bank of the West and other banks are starting to add person-to-person payment options for customers. In all likelihood this won’t be a free service, although it might only cost mere cents per transaction. After you send the money, your friend can decide if he or she wants to deposit the money or put it on a credit card.

This won’t be too hard for banks to start doing, after all Mercatus data shows that for people under the age of 35, a little more than 30 percent have used a cell phone to make a purchase or transfer money. Banks already send alerts and allow people to bank from their cell phones, this is just the next step. ABI Research predicts that person-to-person payments will triple over the next two years.

What about hackers? Well, if you feel comfortable banking from your phone then it’s no difference to send money to a friend from your cell. The same company will be handling the money. Business Week reported that cellular networks are hard to hack into and so mobile banking might be more secure than banking online.

If this is something that interests you then PayPal already as an app for iPhone and Android users. Then the next time you lend someone money for lunch, you don’t have to wait until the next time you see them, they can just send the money to your cell phone.

Swype faster than type

New technology is created to make our lives easier. Cell phones mean you can talk on the go. Then laptops meant you could do work anywhere. Smartphones mean you can do anything you desire anywhere the urge hits you. Technology is constantly getting, to quote Daft Punk, harder, better, faster, stronger. And more convenient.

Sometimes something comes out that I wonder if we’re all ready for just yet. Take Swype. It’s definitely innovative. It will definitely make typing quicker. But that’s contingent on if Swype is easy to use.

The concept is simple: instead of individually pressing on keys to type out words you drag a stylus across the touch screen, starting with the first letter of the word and then tracing a path to the rest of the letters. To be honest, I can’t figure out how it works. How does it not register all the other keys swyped over?

Don’t understand? Watch this video. You can skip to 1:23 to get to the demonstration portion.

It looks interesting but you better believe I won’t buy it without trying it extensively. This could be the kind of technology that peole love and makes things so much easier. Or Swype could be cumbersome and more trouble than it’s worth.

Smartphone no brainer

Really only one phone comes to mind when I think smartphone: the iPhone. I don’t own it, I think it’s a bit pricey, but let’s face facts: it’s the best out there and although Droid is cool, at this point it’s too new. But, while the iPhone makes up just over half of the smartphone market, Android smartphones, which have really only been out for two months, already make up one-fourth. That’s right, these two operating systems combined are 75 percent of the U.S. smartphone market.

I’m not terribly surprised. But I did find it interesting just how quickly Android’s numbers are building. I suppose that partly has to do with the fact that initially there was only one Android phone out and then just two weeks ago two more were added and onto the Verizon network to boot.

But speaking of Verizon and Apple, I missed the little tidbit that Apple is interested in bringing the iPhone over to Verizon as well when the exclusivity contract with AT&T expires. It’s an incredibly smart move. Just based on my own actions I know that if I had a job (student life is tough) and the iPhone was on Verizon, I would buy it. But I’m not switching over to AT&T, which I kind of hate based on what I’ve seen from friends who are on the network, just for a phone. That would be ridiculous. But if that phone came to me…

Fun fact: worldwide two systems also account for 75 percent of smartphones but the two are the iPhone and Symbian. Android has sold considerably less worldwide with only 11 percent of the market.

Happy thumbs

Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks having an actual keyboard on a phone is a nice addition. At JK On the Run a poll shows that more people prefer the keyboard to not having the keyboard. The comments are very interesting too, like the one about using a “face-plate changing software keyboard.” When I voted, for a keyboard, these were the results: