10 Smartphone Features that Should Be Mandatory
10 Smartphone Features that Should Be Mandatory
Posted 06/30/2010 at 6:12pm
| by Amber Bouman and Alex Castle
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Since our recent review of the iPhone 4, we've been doing a lot of thinking about smartphones. They've come a long way from their humble beginings, but we're still not satisfied. There are still features that are either present in only some smartphones, or none at all, that we think are absolutely vital. Here's our quick list of 10 features that should be completely mandatory in every phone.
Check it out, and when you're done hit the comments and let us know what you think. Did we miss a big one? Is one of ours dumb? We want to hear about it.
Front Facing Camera
The fourth incarnation of Apple’s iPhone garnered cred for including a front facing camera, however like most things Apple chooses to put in its hardware, its old news. Front facing cameras have been seen in RIM and Nokia handsets (and in European hardware) for a while now. Also found on the HTC EVO 4g, a front facing camera allows for functionalities and capabilities that have not yet been fully adopted or developed. The video conferencing capabilities afforded by a front facing camera are particularly useful for business users and Skype fans, but there is potential to further extend its usefulness – from photography to facial recognition software, we expect to see this become an increasingly utilized feature hence making it increasingly essential as well.
Replaceable Battery
As we demand ever more mobility and functionality out of our handsets, from running applications and games to watching movies and streaming music, battery life becomes a critical detail. Being stuck away from a power source with a dying battery is no one’s idea of fun. And while many users would rather not carry around additional batteries, like most of our tech, we’d rather have the option. With a plethora of battery options on the market - from battery boosters and cases with battery packs - to tips on how to conserve the most juice possible demonstrate an obvious need to extend a handsets life that is being overlooked. An option to pop in an extra battery instead of frantically searching for a power supply sounds like an easy way to solve this dilemma.
Expandable Storage/microSD
eBooks, apps, photos, videos, movies, music, pictures. It all adds up. While you should always overestimate how much storage you’ll need – especially on a smartphone handset - it seems nearly inevitable that the day will come when you’ll need more space. So it’s not only nice to have the option to attach more space via a microSD slot or expansion slot, but essential. Many of Nokia’s handsets feature this capability, and BlackBerry has been providing this for its business-heavy fan base for a while now but it would be great to see this extend to all handsets as smartphones increase their functionalities.
Find Me Function
Let’s be real – phones get lost and while your carrier’s insurance might help replace the handset, it’s not going to help you get your data and contacts back. While there are plenty of third-party applications that perform varying locate/lock/wipe functions, they all fall short in one way or another. Either they’re costly (Apple’s MobileMe service is $99), provide limited abilities (Sprint’s Family Locator will give you real time info on family members’ locations, but doesn’t allow you to lock the phone or wipe it clean), or only work when the phone is on. We’d like to see a full-featured Find Me function offered natively – one that could find your phone, lock it, wipe it clean, and like BlackBerry’s LookOut service, get our phone to “scream” at us when we’ve lost it in couch cushions – whether its turned on or not.
Print/Fax:
Again, there are plenty of third-party solutions filling the gap here – most noteably Cortado or Hubcast – which use the cloud or Bluetooth to allow users to contact a printer, send any document to a fax machine/printer of your choice and create faxes. Kodak has released the Kodak Pic Flick App,which lets you print stored pictures to a Kodak printer or digital picture frame. HP’s CloudPrint service can email photos, documents, maps, tickets, etc to a home printer and Google is also developing a CloudPrint service. HP remains a step ahead by manufacturing a series of All-in-One printers designed to work with smartphones, allowing the user to print anything to anywhere. Anything, anywhere? Isn’t that what mobile is supposed to accomplish anyways? We say if there’s enough demand to change printer manufacturing, then there’s enough demand to include the feature natively on a handset.
Wi-Fi Sync
Between Edge, 3G, 4G, and Wi-Fi networks, you’ve got a lot of options for getting data on and off, wirelessly. Want to download an app? Go for it, anywhere! Want to watch an entire movie in decent resolution, fire up the NetFlix app and stream it over 3G. Want to sync your address book to your computer? Just—oh wait. You’re gonna have to actually whip out the old USB connector cable and plug it in for that. Why? We don’t know, but we wish phone companies would cut it out. Smartphones are mobile, wireless data machines, and it’s just ridiculous that there are basic phone capabilities that can’t be done over your Wi-Fi network. Make it stop.
Standard Charger/Connector
Alright, maybe a completely wireless standard is a little too much to ask for (we don’t think it is), but can we at least have a single, standard connector for data and power? Mini USB works pretty well for a lot of phones, why not use that? Or maybe they’re worried about some of the limitations of USB. That’s cool—slam a USB 3.0 chip into that sucker and call it a day. Either way, it’s time to ditch the incredible array of proprietary charger/data transfer cables out there and settle on a single solution. It’s more convenient for consumers, greener (fewer chargers have to be produced if your old one works on your new phone) and probably even cheaper for phone manufacturers. There’s been some talk of a standard charger [http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/universal_microusb_mobile_phone_charger_standard_approved] but we want to see real results.
Tethering
We’re here to ask you a question. If a man buys a data plan, is he not entitled to use that data for whatever he wants?
“No,” says the man at Verizon, “He must pay $20 for an additional 2 GB of data to use on his computer.”
“No,” says the man at AT&T, “He must pay $20, with no additional data.”
We rejected those answers. Instead, we chose something different. We chose the impossible. We chose… Free tethering.
Unified Inbox
Email was one of the first functions that really made a “smartphone” smart. Why is it, then, that it’s one of the slowest to innovate? At the very minimum, every smartphone email client should provide for a single, unified email inbox for ALL of your accounts, if you want it. Most people don’t have a separate phone for work and their personal life, so why make it unnecessarily difficult to manage both at once?
Fortunately, this one’s finally catching on. Apple’s iPhone recently got the long-overdue feature as part of the iOS4 update, and most Android phones have been able to do it for a while now. Still, until it’s as standard as a web browser, this one’s staying on our list.
Speech to text / Text to speech
Alright, so maybe this one’s a little pie-in-the-sky at this point, but we’ll be surprised if this don’t look very different in just 5 years. Phones are already integrating speech-to-text and speech-recognition technology in some aspects of their interface, like voice dialing or virtual assistant app Siri, but it’s not enough for us. We think that every time you need to enter text in your phone, you should be able to do it by speaking, whether that’s in a Google search bar, a text message or a note-taking app. Typing is frequently faster, of course, but there are times when you’re carrying something, driving a car, or just feeling lazy, and want to use voice to fill out a field.
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machew100
July 09, 2010 at 1:40pm
LOL very nice bioshock 2 reference, I approve. Too bad no one else caught it in the comments below. Too old probably :p
bart3385
July 09, 2010 at 9:40am
I'm surprised GPS wasn't even mentioned. I make it to a point to have this included whenever i buy a new phone.
newave
July 07, 2010 at 1:07pm
all new phones should come with am/fm radio preferably satelite radio but at least radio
they already have a camera and mp3 support why not am/fm radio reciever
also they might include a remote desktop apy that actually works
Jipstyle
July 06, 2010 at 2:16pm
Despite this fairly comprehensive list, the iPhone 4 receives an 8 from MPC. WTF?
No replaceable battery, expandable storage, proprietary connector, no tethering (in the USA ... Canada and other markets have it included with data plans) ... oh, and it drops calls unless you hold it in the Apple-approved manner and / or purchase a case.
Guisano
July 04, 2010 at 8:01am
A Smartphone should synchronize with your PIM without having to go through some third party's (are you listening, Google?) website. Contacts, calendars, to do's, etc. Connect your phone to your computer and zap them back and forth.
I use my phone primarily for business purposes. We use Outhouse and, good, bad or otherwise, synching my phone with this PIM is not only desireable, it's necessary. I prefer to maintain the privacy of my business contacts, not have them on someone's website in the "cloud" where they can be hacked.
Privacy is maybe just a pretense now but I would like to indulge this a bit.
fociwm
July 01, 2010 at 9:09am
I'm using some credit cards, in a wallet, and a phone, keys, IDs, driver's license and an old small PDA. Yes, I'm an old boy. But paying several hundred bucks for increasing the size of phone and just removing one small PDA is not very attractive. OK, I know that many people likes smartphones, and I don't have any objection on that. But personally, I spend most of my time commuting and in front of a computer. So I don't find any real reason for using smartphone because laptop is always much much more powerful than smartphones.
But there is one thing that I'll rush to buy is the ability to replace everything in my pocket. That is, my credit cards, a wallet, IDs, driver's license and even keys (many except some cash and change). PDA and phone is already in the smartphone, but that's it.
Imagine a phone with a fingerprint scanner (or retina identifier), and that phone can open your house door, be used to pay things in stores, be used to identify yourself, after scanning your fingerprint. I already know that this is the direction some companies are heading, but it is pain to wait... I want nothing except only one small gadget.
Unfortunately, my old small PDA is getting older and the battery life is getting shorter and I must eventually replace it and it might be a smartphone... with many bucks... which I don't want to spend for a toy that I won't use most of the functionality anyway...
mesiah
July 01, 2010 at 8:33pm
This is something I have been waiting for for a long time. We already have rfid swipe cards. I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to put a programmable rfid emmiter into a smart phone. That way when you want to pay for something you just pop open the credit card app, select the card you want to use, and swipe the phone accross the rfid reader. You could password protect the app if you wanted. The only problem would be if your phone battery died, if that was the only card you carried you might be out of luck.
fociwm
July 02, 2010 at 10:37am
Great point. That's why we need replacable battery. But I have another idea. The phone can have a memory chip that does not loose 'default' credit card information and we might use it when the battery is out. As you know, most credit cards these days do not use magnetic bars, but simulate them using a embedded chip in the card. There are even smart cards. So, I believe, battery problem will be a minor one. :)
Evil Don
July 01, 2010 at 4:38am
“No,” says the man at Verizon, “He must pay $20 for an additional 2 GB of data to use on his computer.”
“No,” says the man at AT&T, “He must pay $20, with no additional data.”
Paraphrasing Andrew Ryan? Amirite?
Ominous
July 01, 2010 at 12:40am
PrinterShare for Android is free, allows you to print to any printer over 3g (as long as the computer it is connected to is configured) and really works. Sorry Apple people--guess you're SOL on this one.
ragflan
June 30, 2010 at 10:41pm
I'm not speaking with a fanboy mentality, but if you had a rooted EVO 4G -most- of what was covered is a non-issue. I have a rooted Desire, and besides the front-facing camera and wifi sync, the other points are already available. So with EVO 4G:
1. Front-Facing Camera - Yes.
2. Replacable Battery - Yes.
3. Expandable Storage - Yes.
4. Find me Function - WaveSecure app Yes.
5. Print/Fax - PrinterShare app Yes.
6. WiFi Sync - No. Android does sync all contact/mail/calendar and apps(2.2) with Google, but not media and such. But you have the ability to remote manage your content through WebSharing app. Or many other apps that provide similar functionality. If Dropbox provides the ability to sync folders instead of files on Android, this also is a non-issue.
7. Standard Charger - Yes.
8. Tethering - Since HTC Hero, WiFi Tethering is free on rooted phones with Wireless Tethering app.
9. Unified Inbox - K9Mail Yes.
10. TTS/SST - Yes.
iPhone and Android are great platforms each with their distinct advantages. iPhone remains supreme in media, Android with flexibility and freedom. Being as we are; people with tech knowledge, rooting and jailbreaking should be common since these methods further enhance the abilities of the phone and provide added features. Granted, they are not for non-tech people but when you think about it, most of the points listed here won't even be a complaint from non-tech people who find most of the features of the phone already overwhelming.
mrnuts
June 30, 2010 at 10:12pm
If phones are going to eventually meet all of our normal computing needs, won't we need a larger screen? The future input will probably be a combination of voice recognition and gestures (or perhaps a laser keyboard?) and the output has to be big, and it seems that projection is the only way to go. I'd like a phone where I can plot it down at a desk, project my phone onto the wall of my desk and use it like a desktop.
tapple
June 30, 2010 at 8:20pm
I'm surprised that they say they want speech to text anywhere on the phone, and then ignore that this already exists on android 2.1+. I know the article is about features becoming commonplace, but you'd think a mention is appropriate.
aviaggio
June 30, 2010 at 7:53pm
I'm gonna apologize in advance, but the grammar Nazi in me has been called forth...
While I'm sure Steve Jobs regularly uses incantations to summon minions from an evil deity to do his dirty work, I believe the word you're looking for is "incarnations".
ABouman
July 01, 2010 at 10:54am
Oops...thanks for catching that. Was working on zero hours of sleep.
titan8813
July 01, 2010 at 7:44pm
We also would have accepted "iteration". And, in the same sentence, "it's" (it is).
smashingpumpin
June 30, 2010 at 7:30pm
Where are "Working Antenna, Flash, Verizon/Sprint Compatible, Free/decent priced Apps store" on the list?
_______________________________________________
screw 3D! I'm just in it for the hurts(HZ)!
skinnykid63
June 30, 2010 at 6:44pm
What I love about this list that I can do everything on that list except the print functionality. Granted tethering required me to root my phone, but that shouldn't be hard for the editors of a tech magazine.
Baer
June 30, 2010 at 6:24pm
Of all of these the replaceable battery and the standard power connector are the most needed by all and make the most sense.
At CES you see hundreds of people sitting in the hallways with their devices pluged in to the few available wall outlets. Why? they can not replace their batteries. What are the devices? iPhones and Apple notebooks sold by the greedy Apply who want to sell you a $35 battery for almost $100 just because you can not replace it yourself. I would never ever consider an iPhone for this one reason. An extra battery in my pocket has saved me may times.
BaggerX
July 01, 2010 at 7:41am
Most phones I've seen recently have had either a mini or micro usb connector. Seems like one of those (or the USB 3 equivalent) will end up being the defacto standard going forward.
nsvander
June 30, 2010 at 11:08pm
Funny I have had the same power connector for my last 4 phones, two motorolas, a blackberry and now a G1, all used the same mini-usb connector for charging and transfer. My G1 has user replacable battey, sure its getting a little long in the tooth now, and it wont offically support 2.2, but its still a damn good phone.
Havok
June 30, 2010 at 7:41pm
Back when I still had my Toshiba 17 inch lappy, my Mac toting buddy mocked me because instead of carrying an AC adapter, I would take my extra battery most of the time. Well, swapping to a fresh battery has saved my butt numerous times. Whether it be work, school, or just before a killer Starcraft match with him on the go.
YES! This post made it through the Spam Filter!
IFLATLINEI
July 10, 2010 at 11:30am
Another reason why I purchased the Droid Eris. Mini USB. I just wont purchase another phone again that doesnt follow this standard.
Havok - Really? Still rocking the Spam Filter Sig??? The spam filter has been an issue in atleast a month now.
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