Imagine having the option or choice to check Google Maps for a location while out walking around on the roads, all integrated with a satellite location device so it can give you directions on the fly; check your emails; email some photos to a blog/album (hey, some people do regularly blog you know :); subscribe to your favorite podcasts and have them downloaded in the background; use Skype to call anywhere worldwide for a few cents a minute.
Yeah, I'm sure the Americans out there will be saying: iPhone. Afraid not, I had this all running on my phone on a first generation 3G (high-speed) mobile phone last year on my mobile operators network.
It's funny, I actually wrote this last week but due to various reasons had some other priorities and delayed in posting this as I wasn't happy anyway with how it was written. And then, as it always happen, I see two articles up on Ars Technia here and here regarding Google's latest stats and thoughts towards the mobile world.
Firstly, where did I use them? Most was on a Nokia 6680 (Nokia's first 3G phone that was offered in Ireland) and the only additional add-on required was a GPS module that worked via bluetooth (i.e. how your headset connects). Where was I using all these services?
Mapping services were used to find my way around London. Flying into a different airport, route directions on the fly was a gift
Gmail checks while traveling in China last year
Photo posts while in China
Podcasts: well, I only tried this out - I haven't really gotten into them yet ;)
Skype: the only one that didn't work on the Nokia (it still doesn't) and involved Windows Mobile. But perfect calls (most of the time)
Most of them I'm sure some people would consider as useful. There's a myriad of other possibilities of course that I'm sure I'm not mentioning (status update services like Twitter and Jaiku for example). Anyway back to my point, these are all possibilities for quite a while and there are only two people currently able to even considering trying most of those services: iPhone users (USA only at present) and Three mobile phone users in Europe (although a very limited percentage of the mobile population still). Mainly it's come down to the incumbent telcos not showing any willingness to offer these services at a sensible price. Whether it's a lack of ideas in how to make cash from these new services (i.e. does it become just a pipe to the internet - like your typical ISP for broadband in the home).
I'm starting to wonder if the iPhone is going to change this, along with Google's big pushes to get all it's services working on mobile devices. With almost a million iPhones already sold and no sign of abatement, and now recent rumors that they've managed to persuade some of the European telcos into a revenue sharing agreement. I can only imagine that this is just a rumor! Talk about shooting themselves in the foot if this is the case.
But considering I know how much my bill was for running these services at 2006 mobile rates (think several hundred Euros), I can only look forward to what is starting to happen.
The other article covers Google's current thinking regarding buying it's own frequency spectrum in the States. How's that for trying to scare the telcos. If Google took it's 'free' attitude to mobile phone networks and paid for them with advertisements, what happens to everyone else......
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