Mobile scratch-proof glass, and the road ahead

I have recently moved from a vanilla-Nokia-phone to some sort of a smart phone. My new Nokia N73 is pretty smart. One thing that constantly worries me, to the extent that I was thinking of not using this phone is the delicateness of this phone. This is a very nice phone, however the screen is so delicate, and it’s so costly that I can’t use it the way I used to use my old phone. I used to throw my old phone on my desk, on my car seat, treated it pretty badly – and it worked GREAT. However, the N73, with a 3.2 megapizels Carl Ziess lens, cannot be thrown around, with it’s delicate screen I can’t even keep my keys or coins in the same pocket I keep my phone.

I interestingly I see Judi Sohn concerned about iPhone:

there is no way I’m buying a glass-covered cell phone for $500 without accidental protection or some assurance that this thing can take everyday bumps and bruises without a problem. I want to use this thing…not display it on my wall for goodness sakes.

I also see iPhone addressing this problem by making a scratch proof glass. I wonder why Nokia doesn't make scratch proof glass? Is it because they want people to throw away their phone after a few months of usage and buy the latest models?

I am wondering what are the other major mobile innovations I am going to see in the next 12 months?

iPhone is Real…Macworld Keynote Live

WOW.




























Gigaom has an excellent coverage of the Keynote speech at Macworld, and the announcement of iphone. Here is a pointwise excerpt:

• Dropping Computer from company name, now just APPLE
• Will try and sell 10 million in 2008. 1% market share in the mobile phone business.
• Multiyear agreement exclusive with Cingular
• Shipping exclusively on Cingular in the US
• Available in June 2007
• $499 for 4GB model, $599 for 8GB
• 200 patents for all the inventions in iPhone. Now getting to pricing finally.
• 5 hours battery life, 16 hours audio playback.
• Google Maps, search built into the device. Jerry Yang does a cameo too, Yahoo providing free push IMAP email accounts for all iPhone customers.
• they’ve been working on this for 2.5 years
• wifi and bluetooth,quadband gsm + edge
• has random access voicemail
• runs on osx
• the thing is one giant screen
• revolutionary interface. motorola q, black berry, treo, nokia e62 … every program wants its own buttons and controls, but they can’t change… we solved it in computers 20 years ago with bitmap screen and pointing device, mouse. getting rid of all buttons
• the place is going wild.
• iPhone is announced. it’s called the iphone
• 2 billion songs sold on iTunes. 5 million a day

See also this slideshow at flickr.

Cisco -- not apple -- announces iPhone branded VoIP phones

Edgadget reports:

We hate to break it to everybody who thought the inevitable Apple phone was going to be called the iPhone, but Cisco, which has apparently had the trademark on the name since the 90s, is launching a line of Linksys "iPhone" VoIP devices (yes, that's right, lower case "i", uppercase "P"). Why wait until now to launch the iPhone name? We can't say for sure, but we imagine Cisco was probably trying to work behind the scenes to sell the rights to the name to Apple, but things didn't pan out -- but since "iPhone" is already a fairly ubiquitous brand without even being launched, hey, why not run with it?

Businessweek reports:

Cisco has owned the trademark on the iPhone brand since 2000, when it acquired Infogear—which had registered the name in 1996. Infogear showed an Internet appliance bearing the iPhone name at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in 1997 (see BusinessWeek.com, 2/3/97, "A New Gig for Your Phone: Net Surfer"). Cisco spent $301 million to acquire Infogear in 2000.