What I Want In A Mobile Phone
I’ve been reading the fantastic future perfect blog this morning and it’s got me thinking about my mobile essentials — i.e. the things I absolutely must have on my person when I leave home. Most of the time these include keys, cash, wallet (credit/debit, id, business cards), USB key, and my cellphone. Sometimes it includes my laptop, mp3 player, and soon will include digital camera (I’m in the market).
What strikes me is that most of these things can be combined into one device. In fact, if I could combine all of these things into a device about the size of my current phone - the Motorola Razr - I would be perfectly happy. Some of these things require widespread infrastructure upgrades in North America that are largely available in some parts of the world, notably Japan and Northern Europe. Some are available right now.
That said, here’s how I think it should work…
- Cash. The great thing about cash is that it’s anonymous. Sometimes I just don’t feel like giving up my personal data to the random vendor on the street. The concepts behind e-cash are well understood, but have largely failed because the folks with significant merchant penetration (i.e. the credit card companies) do not have any incentive to allow you to pay without associating your identity with the transaction. Damned shame, I say.
- Credit/Debit/Keys/Business Cards. Ultimately, these things are all about identity. Putting identity in a device makes all kinds of sense. Once again, so far as credit and debit go, these things are already widely established in some parts of the world. Once again, North America lags behind, largely due to our entrenched base of legacy payment methods Exchanging of contact info (business cards) is possible using some devices but still not very common among most mobiles. Finally, there is no reason I should not be able to say to my house, “Hey, it’s me!” for entry. Finally, most of us have oodles of passwords. There is no reason why our phones should not be able to act as the physical token in the two-factor authentication schemes that security experts have been talking about for years.
- Location/situational awareness. If there’s one thing we’ve learned from instant messaging, texting, Twitter, facebook, etc., it’s that we love to let our friends know where we are and what we’re up to. With GPS built into phones these days, a clever UI, and sophisticated privacy system this one is just going to take some hot-shot software developer to totally hit it out of the park.
- Digital camera, MP3 player. These things are pretty common in phones these days. My phone is old.
- USB key. Flash memory is cheap and getting cheaper and smaller. ‘Nuff said.
The point is, I’m tired of carrying all this stuff. The technology for all this has been around for years. Let’s get on with it, shall we?
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