The future of cell phones. Really.

I bet you've been wondering about the future of cell phones and wishing you could talk to Bob Iannucci, head of the Nokia Research Center (NRC), in Helsinki, Finland. Right? Well, thanks to Technology Review, you can come close. They have an interview with Bob in their most recent online issue. The link to the article is http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17734&ch=biztech&sc=&pg=1

One of the interesting things in the article (to me) is his comments about simplifying phones. I can certainly see the merit in that. Not only do I have a pretty complex phone right now (the N80) but I also spend about 90 minutes in a phone store recently - don't ask - and got to see many, many people coming and going asking questions about their phones. Most were totally confused.

The other interesting thing he spoke of was Nokia's new twist on bluetooth, called Wibree. Wibree has been the subject of much speculation in the (cell phone) media, and this article is the first one that made any sense of the technology. Not only that, but the proposed use for it - sensor networks linked to your phone - is so different from anything I've heard lately about mobile phones, I just can't wait to see what they mean by that.

From what I see, it could mean that your phone is part of a data collection system (temperature, for example) and these capabilities really start to extend what your phone is, in a number of different directions.

I suspect we'll have to wait a year or two to see what that means.

...r