In the developing form-factor cage match between looped and squared, Apple may have chosen to step into the ring with round. At least according to some leaks from the East. I am also putting my money on circular.
It looks like circles are cropping up all over the place now.
There's nothing like a good form factor battle to get a market going.
I'm not sure if it's just confirmation bias on my part, or the wearables market really is the hottest and most exciting tech trend since the introduction of the white iPhone.
Wearables-related headlines are all over the place, from popular tech blogs to all the major business magazines like Forbes (which often indicates the peak of hype). I'm still an agnostic coward when it comes to predicting the future of these gadgets. I don't see any network effect yet, and I don't know one single person who wears one, even though I know people who work for companies which make these.
Let's face it: the market still needs a poster child. And some killer apps. And, of course, a decisive form factor.
So, Samsung has their square Gear, but Samsung is one company they never met a platform or a form factor they didn't like. No company spreads the risk like Samsung. There is little doubt that Samsung would love to corner the market on smart watches. Don't like square wear? It looks like Samsung is getting ready to make a profound turnaround in smart watches.
Did Samsung just re-invent the circular smart watch?
So, how is the market for wearables shaping up? Is round & retro the new flat & black?
Predicting consumer tastes is always the hard part. Let's look at the market for smart watches. Though connected watches have been around for more than a decade from vendors such as Sony Ericsson and Polar, they never caught on as mainstream accessories.
If I had been a smart watch designer, I would understand the temptation to create a freeze-dried version of the screens we all know so well: shrink down the familiar smartphone display, turn it sideways, and add a wrist strap.
But given that Google's Android Wear platform and SDK support both round and rectangular watch form factors, I have to wonder which shape will lead the market. While the popular wearables to date such as Samsung's Galaxy Gear and Pebble's Smartwatch are rectangular, I have to say that the retro round-styled watches do look like the could catch on. I've been pretty cynical about a real market for these gadgets in general, but I'm starting to see something here. Please check the videos below for devices from Motorola and a company called Kairos.
So, will the MOTO 360 become the RAZR of the smart watch world or will it be hip to be square? Only time will tell.
I've been seeing similar projector-based form factors for a number of years from other university research labs and company visionary slides. These are playful concepts which might complement devices at some point. But I'm just not seeing the light myself with these visions.
From Reuters: "Researchers at the University of Tokyo are developing indoor projection technology that incorporates a sense of touch for interactive devices of the future. The system emits ultrasonic waves to generate pressure a user can feel and could one day render keyboards, smartphones, and even pens obsolete. Ben Gruber has more."
A smartphone with a 5.8-inch and 6.3-inch display. Why not? This isn't amazing news per se, as this Samsung device has been widely leaking and it's really just another phablet as we've seeing. And even though these are bigger than Samsung's 5.5-inch Note, Samsung is calling these "smartphones."
Other than the size of the screen, the specs are not amazing: no LTE, 1.4GHz Dual Core, 720p, ...
The big question is: now that 5-inch displays are established as the flagship norm, is it already time to bring out the really big guns? It's in the hands of the consumers now.
SAMSUNG: SEOUL, Korea, April 11, 2013 - Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, a global leader in digital media and digital convergence technologies, today announced the Samsung GALAXY Mega, a device that combines the portability and convenience of a smartphone with the power, multitasking capabilities and extensive viewing experience of a tablet. The newest addition to the GALAXY family balances an optimal viewing experience on a 6.3-inch HD screen, yet is ultra-thin and portable enough to put into a pocket or hold in one hand. The GALAXY Mega offers a mix of popular smartphone and tablet features such as an effortless user experience, a split screen, multitasking between video and other apps and more...
The Samsung Galaxy Mega smartphone with 5.8-inch display. (Needs something to scale it.)
Back in the year 2000 I saw a really nice, super sharp color mobile display at an industry trade show. However, I didn't see any mainstream phone with a screen like that until around 2005. That's an example of the time gap from component demos to store-shelf ready implementation.
Yes, companies that design components begin hocking their wares years before they will implemented in products. In fact, they start showing off working and non-working prototypes behind the curtains in deep non-disclosure agreement meetings. Ordinary folks like us don't get a peak until development work is nearly complete. And then it still takes years and years for real products to hit the streets. There are few surprises for industry insiders.
Now we're getting to a point where flexibility is getting close. How close? From experience, I would say five years until some mainstream product hits a mall near you. The displays are getting there, the batteries, some of the guts. We could start to see modularity, with wrap-around displays here and there a bit sooner.
There is hope: the most boring market in the world will become more flexible someday. For now, however, the world remains flat.
Another look at Samsung's YOUM flexible display technology happy, pretty people video:
KEY TRENDS: Flexible design, new form factors, "Follow the components," healthcare, wearable computing
Get ready for some more flexibility in design.
Samsung, Sony, Corning and other display component vendors have been showing their enablers for flexible smartphone screens for several years. These make for fun demo products at industry trade shows, but won't result in any real-world form factor changes until other components can bend as well.
So, here we have a bendable battery. Researchers at Northwestern University in the U.S. are showing a stretchable lithium-ion battery. The battery could be placed inside a device, or inside a human body. It can be charged via inductive coupling which would allow it to be placed in some odd places indeed.
Of course these are early days and this is still a laboratory demo. But now is the time for designers to think ahead and stretch their imaginations. The definition of what a device is and where it will be is evolving quickly. Get ready for powerful changes ahead.
Will stretchable battery technology enable tinkering outside the box?
Image via NEUROGADGET.
Here is some more WOW potential for the handset vendor who gets this right.
Can you have your QWERTY and eat it too? Here is what Tactus Technology has been talking about for several years now. Production begins late 2013, early 2014 according to the interview below.
We've been seeing flexible display components for many years now. Will 2013 be the year they finally get used in some truly innovative ways? Fingers crossed.
When it comes to device form factors, the smartphone business is a snoozer. More than 90% of devices on the market look essentially the same. And let's be honest, they work the same as well.
What happened to the excitement of future innovations? I've seen some pretty cool device prototypes and concepts during my career. Sadly, I suppose most of these are collecting dust in storage boxes somewhere, and others are used as very expensive paperweights.
So, will 2013 be the year of something just a little bit fresh? Maybe. Samsung is expected to show some sort of prototype device using their own flexible screen components. Whether this will be a technology display to interest other handset vendors in their displays or a working Android smartphone from Samsung's mobile unit isn't clear. But we'll see the light soon at CES.
We've been seeing these flexible screens from Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, 3M and other component vendors for approximately four years now. The bigger question is how useful are these if all the other building blocks of a handset are stiff as a board? Would a handset that conforms to the inside of your pocket be a subtle solution to a slight problem? Now it's up to designers and software engineers to think outside the block.
And let's face it, this is what we're all waiting for:
In a world that has brought us “stagflagation,” “brunch” and “Brangelina,” comes the latest portmanteau. It’s the “phablet.” It’s too big to be a phone, too small to be a tablet. And now we have to wonder if phablets are a real phabnomenon?
Suddenly I've been coming across the hybrid word “phablet” very often. I suppose it’s an obvious combo addition to the lexicon. But what the heck is a phablet? One definition I’ve found is it’s a touch device with a screen size between 4.6 and 5.5 inches. Any smaller, it’s a phone. Any larger, it’s a tablet.
Samsung’s Galaxy Note is the device that probably started the species. The Note has a 5.3-inch touch display and even comes with a stylus (so it’s a “stouch” device... or a “stablet”). And Samsung’s new Galaxy SIII could very well become the best-selling phablet in history. With a 4.8-inch display, please don’t confuse it with being a smartphone.
Other vendors such as HTC, LG, and Huawei either have or will soon be shipping phablets as well.
Is it time for all device vendors to get their phabet acts together? Phobviously it is, so make a note of it and don’t phall behind.
In a smartphone market filled with look-alike, black rectangular products, is it time to eye fresh, new form factors?
Way back in the year 2000, I had the opportunity to try a few near-to-eye displays being pitched at several major trade shows. The devices came from both start-ups and mega consumer electronics vendors which saw these gadgets as a potential new computing form factor.
So, the rumor is that Google is actively working on developing a stand-alone heads-up display device that could be, in effect, "smart glasses." The glasses would run a thin version of Android on top of an ARM processor, have voice recognition, and a series of sensors such as gyroscope and accelerometer to detect head movement and direction.
Apparently one of the key applications of the glasses is to support augmented reality. Such glasses could, for example, detect what products the user might be looking at using a front-facing camera and then display additional information and pricing details for the user. We could begin to wonder what new types of information collection this would enable: Google already knows what we're looking at in the virtual world. Now the company can begin to collect information about what people are looking at in the physical world as well.
Privacy issues aside, I think Google and other vendors of HUDs and NEDs have an uphill battle. While I see discreet wearable computing has significant potential, I can't say that I see eye-to-eye with such an in-your-face approach to keeping users connected. But as always, it's important to remain open-minded to change, and maintain a heads-up approach to monitoring any potential form factor shifts and opportunities.
So, who invented the tablet form factor? This is certainly a topical discussion.
To anyone who has ever watched any sort of science fiction, from The Flintstones to The Jetsons, from Star Trek to 2001: A Space Odyssey, the concept of PDAs and tablets seemed rather obvious. It was a natural metaphor of touching and writing. Of paper and pen. Of pointing and gesturing.
I like to point to the Nokia MediaScreen, a proof-of-concept device introduced at IFA in September 1999, as the start of big thinking when it comes to the tablet. The MediaScreen was a Linux-based tablet concept device with a GSM uplink and DVB-T reception. It was hip, connected, exciting, and slightly ahead of its time. Nokia was at its peak during the time, and when Nokia spoke, the audience listened. The MediaScreen drove the fans wild. Was Nokia about to make the market for this new form factor? No.
About a year later 3Com introduced the Audrey. It was the time of internet-appliance madness. The Audrey was almost as pretty as its namesake, Audrey Hepburn, but the product never made it as big. It was canned mid-2001. But around the same time, Microsoft began talking about tablets and pen-based computing. The products weren't mature enough to succeed, but the ideas were still flowing.
Of course, the truth is credit is due to many. Gene Roddenberry and Arthur C. Clarke. 3Com and Palm (who were one in the same for a while). Apple and Nokia. Microsoft and Amazon. And many more.
It's a shame to see innovation go flat as it is these days. Hopefully going forward, the industry will be on a roll.
Flintstone's tablet: sometime between 50 million to 100,000 years ago: Note: Dinosaurs roam free in the background, making accurate time determination a bit tricky.
Star Trek tablet: mid-1960s.. or the future:
Apple's Newton from 1993:
Palm Pilot PDA circa 1997:
Nokia's "MediaScreen" concept device, introduced in 1999:
3Com's "Audrey" introduced October 2000. Killed June 2001:
