Sony Ericsson on future of mobiles
November 08, 2007

64 Gbyte of memory, camera with auto focus. And many more radio standards supported. In addition, all features must be easy to use. Those are some of the things to expect from the mobile phone, within a couple of years, according to Bengt Stavenow at Sony Ericsson, speaker at the Mobile Future conference in Stockholm today.

- You will never see a Sony Ericsson phone lacking focus on cost, battery time and size. If we get the question why feature X is not yet in the mobile, the answer is probably that it is not compatible with one of these three. The mobile should be like a Swiss army knife, but nothing gets in if it does not fulfil those three requirements, said Bengt Stavenow from Sony Ericsson when speaking at the Mobile Future conference in Stockholm.

Luckily all electronics get cheaper, smaller and less energy consuming, so mobiles do get more and more functions. Which ones can we expect the coming years?

- Soon we will see mobile phone with triband 3G, in addition to quadband GSM and EDGE. There will be an abundance of parallel radio systems, which means that our future as engineers is secured.

The speed is naturally increased. The top speeds in the network will be at 100 Mbit/s in a couple of years. In practice, according to Bengt Stavenow, that means that it will be possible to build services demanding a secure bitrate of 4 Mbit/s. For operators that means that the cost of transport gets lower, and flat rates possible and plausible.

Megapixel race

If development continues like it has, the phone memory will be 68 Gbyte whithin a few years. And the camera?

- There is a megapixel race going on, and it will continue, but there is also a need for increased camera quality. Optical zoom plays a key part here.

Other features to enter the phone will be Near Field Communications to transfer card data, positioning and mobile tv.

- The most important for mobile tv is not whether it will be technology A, B or C, but that the consumer gets access to what he wants when he wants it. There is likely to be a mix of download and streaming video.

And so, the digital home.

- With Sony in our brand, we expectations are high on us to integrate home electronics with mobiles.

According to Bengt Stavenow it will be possible to control and access the tv and desktop computer content with the mobile. Even at a distance. But, he points out, it is very important that all these features are easy and intuitive to use.

- We must work considerably harder with the user experience to not suffer from feature overload. They must be presented in a way that gives the user energy. One should be able to use the most important features with only one to two clicks. For instance, we today have great discussions on what to do with the camera. If you want to save your images, it has to be done with one click. MMS, one click.

-And, concluded Bengt Stavenow, no technology carries its own weight. Design is king.

By: Elias Nordling, Jonas Kämpe