Mobile Device Screen Resolution – here’s looking at you
- Peter Gabriel via last.fm
As might have been expected, mobile device screens keep getting smaller even though desktop monitor screens get bigger. That paradox is one that is difficult to avoid. Mobile devices are becoming ever more popular and must be highly transportable. That gives you two problems
- The keyboard
- The screen
The keyboard is an easy one to resolve since voice control can provide an ideal input method. Indeed smart phones are designed to handle voices so what could be better.
The screen is an entirely different problem. It might appear that mobile web pages must be small. However desktop screens show what the user really wants. Much more information and much more interactivity with a higher content of a whole variety of multimedia experiences.
What could be the answer? Perhaps the words of that Peter Gabriel song may give a clue, In Your Eyes.
If you consider that difficult to believe, consider the words of an informed spectator of the digital world. Robert X. Cringely suggests that the solution is Pictures in Our Heads. He too sees a huge growth for mobile devices since the purchasing cycle is rapid and new technology comes along very fast. Reluctantly he accepts the voice control approach to inputting data as we struggle with an ever diminishing keyboard.
Where he opens up a whole new way of thinking is when it comes to that mobile screen.
We’re at the point right now where primitive single-pixel displays can be built into contact lenses. They act as user interfaces for experimental devices like automatic insulin pumps. This already exists. A patch of carbon nanotubes on your arm continuously monitor blood glucose levels, driving a pump that keeps your insulin supply right where it should be. Any problem with the pump or the levels is shown by a red dot that appears in your field of view courtesy of that contact lens. The data connection between pump and eyeball is wireless. The power to run that display is wireless too, since the contact lens display scavenges RF energy out of the air to run, courtesy of that mobile phone on your belt and that WiFi access point on the ceiling.
While that display is a single pixel today, we can pretty easily predict at what point it could be the equivalent of HDTV. Except I don’t expect we’ll ever get there.
Shortly we will communicate with our devices, I predict, through our thoughts. By 2029 (and probably a lot sooner) we’ll think our input and see pictures in our heads.
In other words, we avoid the need for mechanical devices between our neural circuits and our smart devices. Both ways communication will occur directly from your brain waves to the Internet via wireless transmissions. Only twenty years to get there but perhaps that is a very feasible scenario.
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BPWrap
December 2nd, 2009 at 2:31 am
What about your cell do you think could be better? Is there anythiing about your mobile device that really frustrates you? What would your dream cell phone software include? What features and applications would you find most useful? Thanks
December 2nd, 2009 at 11:11 am
I think cellphone and PC are two different breed so we cannot have all the facilities in one
December 3rd, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Don’t really agree with a previous comment….
I guess in the nearest future PC and cellphone will be united in something even greater. Even now you can see the first step of integration: smartphones and communicators.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:03 am
I’m amazed at how many different features they try to cram into cellphones. I’m just not convinced that it’s worth it.
December 11th, 2009 at 11:47 am
small screen sizes has always been a problem preventing me from using my WAP phone technology to shop online etc. It’s very hard to see products in any clarity, I would certainly welcome an innovative solution
December 14th, 2009 at 11:00 am
I’d like to hear an optometrist and ophthalmologist perspective on the consequences of these smaller screen sizes especially for people like myself who are optically challenged. I recently purchased a Netbook and as much as I like it for its portability I am afraid I will have to get rid of it for a full-size laptop in order for maximal viewing.
December 14th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
I think the answer will come and it will be none of the above, although I cant imagine what. The human / electronic interface is surely on the way but not in time for the rapidly shrinking mobile device. I think there will be a new kind of screen, perhaps holographic in nature that will allow viewing more stuff in the same size area.