Smartphones: Quadcore and beyond

What tech savvy consumers and writers are waiting for this year is the expected deluge of quadcore ARM devices and dual core devices clocked at over 2.0 GHz. I think the additional power of new ARM processors will be useful for tablets. Coupled with physical keyboards, external hard drives and  larger monitors, a tablet could one day serve as a replacement for a personal computers. I am usre, additional horsepower for tablets this year, and in coming years will be put to good use.

For smartphones, the allure of the quad-core smartphone (and faster dual cores) is not all that interesting. There is only so much you want to do on a 3.5 or 4.65-inch screen. Single core processors are powerful enough to handle smartphone chores like communication, social networking, note taking and keeping track of your schedule. Dual core smartphones really improved the multimedia experience by allowing 1080p video capture and playback, and allowing for more complex and graphically impressive games. 

I think it is some time before we leave 1080p as being the standard video format so higher resolution video capture and playback will be meaningless for practical intents and purposes.  This seems to leave the only benefit of faster smartphones as better gaming. 

Rather than ramp up on speeds, this is what I think smartphone makers should be working on. 

True 24 hour battery life.  It is pretty much impossible to get a modern touch screen smartphone that will survive 24 hours on heavy use. Basically, if fully charged when we leave home in the morning, our smartphones will survive till we get home. While todays smartphones are designed to make our life simpler, we do have to worry more about battery life management. Keeping your battery topped of with a mid-day charge, carrying a spare battery or a portable charger is something many of us do. 

I think instead of the speed race, a smartphone manufacturer should focus on the endurance race. Give us more powerful batteries. Work on more power efficient components. Wow us with stellar endurance.

The brut force solution to the problem of battery life. The Motorola Droid RAZR MAXX has a 3300 mAh battery. This is 2-3 time larger than your typical smartphone battery.

Better cameras. The best camera phone in the market was released in 2010. The Nokia N8 has still has the best camera in a phone. Smartphone manufacturers are working on this and the Sony Xperia Arc, Samsung Galaxy S II and Apple iPhone 4S have very impressive cameras. It would be good if someone is able to meet the N8 standard before it is two years old.  After that, the goal should be to render everything other than a DSLR or Prosumer cameras obsolete.

I think more users will appreciate a stellar camera over higher Quadrant Benchmarks.

Edge to edge displays. Large screens are better. They make it easier to read your messages and email, browse the web and blast through pigs defenses. Android smartphones are also getting larger and larger by the year. Apple keeps the screen at 3.5-inches which keeps the phone at a very nice pocket friendly size.

Focus should be placed on how to make larger screens with narrower more hand friendly devices, so that larger displays do not necessarily mean monster sized a handsets.

I think a handset that can make improvements in this areas may be more well received by consumers than simply a faster version of last years handset.