Mobile phone and UMPC. Application and usage comparison

Posted on 30 August 2007, Last updated on 07 November 2019 by Steve Paine

Have you ever tried going mobile without a mobile phone? Its impossible and will be for some time. A mobile phone is a small, efficient comms device that can be carried 24/7 and as it develops, there’s a lot more to the mobile phone than just voice. As I lie here inside my tent waiting for the Li-Ion battery to charge (looking good today for 4 hours of ultra mobile PC energy) I have some time left on yesterdays charge to detail something that I’ve already written about many time and summarised in one of my handful of posts back in Feb 2006. The diagram below shows the smallest device that you can perform certain applications on. For example, email and RSS reading along with IM and microblogging sits perfectly on a mobile phone. Photo editing needs an bigger screen and processor.

Here’s a more detailed breakdown of applications and uses that need to be split between a mobile phone and a portable x86-based computer. A lot of this if obvious but has been confirmed by the way i’ve been using the devices during the Solar ultra mobile PC tour.

Multitasking mobile phone.
320×240 screen
Small style Numeric keypad.

Applications and uses
Quick digital snapshot cam
Quick med-q video shorts
Read RSS feeds
Microblogging
Instant messaging
SMS
Read Email / short response email
News, Weather, Traffic data from optimised websites
Map and local search via internet
SIP phone
Music playback
Radio playback

Advantages:Efficient battery
Small size
Cheap spare batteries (10 Euro not 100!)
Cheap 12v charging solutions
Multiple data comms methods (wifi, bt, gsm, umts)

ultra mobile PC 5-7″ 800×480, 300nits,
plus optional full keyboard

Applications and uses
Fast rich browsing. (FIE) using latest
extensions and plugins.
Video playback.
Video streaming.
Photo editing.
Use of Web2.0 apps and APIs (api use also possible
on mobile phone)
Large file storage.
Rich HTML WYSIWYG drag n drop, cut n paste editing
(docs, journals)
Vast range of applications and quick applications
developement possibilities. All desktop PC compatible.
High-detail mapping, navigation.
Diagrams and annotations with touchscreen.
E-books reading (4-5″ screen, sub 400g is comfortable.)
Easy access to peripherals (cams, printers)
and other expansion possibilites.
Desktop capable (VGA-out etc.)

Keyboard: Brings fast, efficient data entry for
reports, journals etc etc. through easy-to-read table-top screen

Advantages:
Easy Read screen (50-100cm, table-top)
Touchscreen
Interfaces and expansion

The challenge for the future is to bring features from the right column into the left column. Some of the won’t fit until screen technology advances to the point where we have roll-out 5″ colour touchscreens. Thats 5 years away at least. Do you have anything that you would add, remove or modify on this list?

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