LATEST TECHNOLOGY IN MOBILE PHONES

LATEST TECHNOLOGY IN MOBILE PHONES
ARUNKARTHIK.K
DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
GOVERNMENT COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY
ANNA UNIVERSITY, COIMBATORE-13.
1.Abstract
The mobile phone, also known as cellular phone, has become one of the most successful inventions in the 20th century. In the late 90s, mobile phones became one of the major communication devices. The first commercial mobile phone system started in 1979 in Japan.
2.Introduction
According to Cellular Online, the global mobile phone subscribers in 2003 are around 1.52 billion, which is about 20 percent of the current world population. This figure showed the success of the mobile phone industries. In about 20 years' time, this technology conquered the global and became a demand for the majority of people in the world. It provided communication for people no matter anywhere and anytime.
3.Mobile technology
Mobile phones were meant to be a device which enables users to have the ease on telecommunication freely wherever they want. But in the late 90’s, SMS (Short Message Service), a new technology was brought out. SMS is a transmission of short text message from mobile phones to mobile phones. This became a revolution making mobile phones to develop into a device that not only allows simple voice to voice telecommunication. Mobile phone now not only became an entertainment device (featuring functions such as camera, FM and MP3 players etc) but also allowing users to access through internet, personal digital assistant (PDA) functions and also having video conference using the latest 3G network. Someday, mobile phones might be able to replace computers.
4.Mobile Development
From the early stages of analog cellular to now the latest 3G mobile phone system, the mobile phone developed rapidly in the past 20 years. Each stage of development provided a big improve to the industries. From early stages of voice to voice simple communication, to the WAP and GPRS internet connection and now the high speed internet connection through the internet, it showed that mobile phones is one of the leading technology in the high technology industry. The convenience brought by this technology indeed changed the life of many people and society. Many things such as banking, gathering information such as reports or latest news, control the share market via GPRS etc are what the technology helped to improve and ease the life of people. Japan is the country which the mobile phone technology develops the fastest in the world. Before the 3G technology was launched in other countries, the Japanese had already mastered the technology. A discussion about the fast development of mobile phone industry Japan will be included in the essay.
Studies believed that a new mobile phone network system, 4G will be in the market in the nearby future. 4G, or known as the fourth generation mobile is a whole new radio access network. Stronger and clearer signals and higher speed (broadband speed, 100 times faster than the 3G connection) connection through the internet are the highlights of the 4G technology. Although the 3G technology had only been promoted no long ago, this new technology is now under development stage and believed to be put out in the market in year 2010. It is believed that the 4G will be a big leap and a whole new revolution for the mobile phone industry and the users.
Along with the development of mobile phones, many subsidiary technology developed by the mobile phone companies were also developed and influencing other products such as Bluetooth, Symbian (an operating system (OS) specially designed for mobile phones) and some software companies that designs software for the Symbian OS. These technologies improved the interactive among mobile phones and the users. It provided a much convenience and wider usage for the mobile phone users. More and more companies now are trying to gain a share in the mobile phone market. Many big companies which are developing PDA OS such as Window CE (Pocket PC), PALM and Linux are also engaging their OS with mobile phones functions. This proved that the mobile phone industry is indeed a good market to invest in. The competition in the market is also another reason causing the mobile phone industry to develop in such a short time.
Since mobile phone was developed and used by a large population of people, it changed the lifestyle of many people. On positive views, mobile phone provided a fast and immediate communication for people, which built up a much closer relationship within each another. Though, the negative views of mobile phone became a popular discussion now. Symptoms such as radiation which causes cancer from the mobile phones and mobile phone addiction are now argued to be the disadvantages of the technology. The danger brought by using mobile phones such as the unsafe of using mobile phone during driving or radiation of mobile phone causing danger to certain places such as the gas station are also problems for mobile phone users.

5.Mobile Phone - Revolution
From the development since the first “modern� mobile phone’s launch, the industries has developed rapidly and changed a lot in the short 20 years. Here are the different stages of the mobile phone:
First Generation (1G)
The first generation mobile phone refers to the mobile phones that were developed in the 1980s.
Second Generation (2G)
GSM, CDMA and TDMA are the different protocols that brought the mobile phone into the second generation stage. The protocols of the 2G mobile phone are digitalised transmitted. SMS (Short Message Service) is also the services added for the 2G services. The 2G was introduced to the market basically in the early 1990s.
Second And a Half Generation (2.5G)
Still under the same network protocol, but provided services such as WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) enabling mobile phones to access on certain websites. Coloured screen with camera featured mobile phones were also introduced in this stage (not all phones are featured with these new functions).
Third Generation (3G)
A whole new network protocol launched in the twenty-first century. It is either under IMT-2000, UMTS or W-CDMA
standards. The 3G protocol enables high speed connection (speed similar to broadband connection) to access through internet and also video calls.
Besides the convergence from the first generation to the third generation mobile phones, the functions featured in mobile phones are getting more sophisticated and more useful. Mobile phones now are not only for communication. The simple communication device now has converged into a multi function device. Many mobile phones now are developed into PDA-like (Personal Digital Assistant) phones with OS (Operating System) that enables the communication device to operate as if a mini computer(Dornan, 2000). Symbian is an OS specially developed for mobile phone. Software can be installed individual by the users into the phone in order to operate other functions. Besides Symbian, Linux, Microsoft (Smartphone and PDA phones) and PALM (PDA phones) are taking the share in this market.
6.Blue tooth
Bluetooth, a form of wireless short range connection also changed the way mobile phone operates. Bluetooth is co-developed by mobile phone developers such as Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia and some computer/electronic developers. Bluetooth enables mobile phones with Bluetooth to make wireless connection with Bluetooth headsets, connection to computers to swap data via Bluetooth dongle etc, providing the users to use the mobile phones much more easily and convenience.
Entertainment on mobile phones has also been a development for many developers. Mobile phone gaming (such as Java games, the most popular game platform), camera functions, media player (playing MP3 and short films) are now engaged among 2.5G and 3G mobile phones. Laptops can also get access to the internet using the 2.5G or 3G mobile phone as the modem. Emails can also be accessed via these mobile phones.
7.GPRS
Mobile phones can also become an information centre. Information from weather reports, latest news, share market status etc can all be gathered from small mobile phones. Before WAP or GPRS were well developed, users can gather the above information from the system operator (depending on the system operator, not all provide these services). Users can also order of daily automatic updates via SMS. Later with the development on WAP and GPRS to the latest 3G, users will only have to log on to the system operator’s homepage on the phone to look for these information.
8.Mobile Phone Technology - Future Development
Mobile phones are getting more and more sophisticated. Thus, development on mobile phones is just like the computers. The technology is growing everyday. Different functions and usage on mobile phones are created and updated. From the network system from mobile phones, it is still developing. Although the new 3G system had just been launched not long ago, many companies had already started on researching and developing on the fourth generation (4G) system. Researchers are hoping that the 4G system can reach a much faster speed, a connection speed up to 100Mb per second during connection, tighter network security and also bring up the quality during communication no matter on voice or video calls. Via mobile phones, many things such as the security system, surveillance on certain items could be done easily. The 4G system will be expected to be launched in 2010.
Mobile phone, the piece of communication device itself is also becoming a multi functioned device. Smartphones and PDA phones are already launched in the market. From the new models of mobile phones released in the market recently, we can see that mobile phone manufacturers now are all heading to this market. Mobile phone incorporating with computing functions will be able to replace other devices such as laptop, PDA and even entertainment devices tool (Dornan, 2000).
Along with the development of mobile phones integrated with OS, the OS and software development will also be a big challenge. The mobile phone market will not only be a competed by mobile phone manufacturers (hardware manufacturers), software companies such as Microsoft, PALM and Symbian will also be competing in the mobile phone market, creating more and more new product and ideas.
Push to talk (PTT) is also function is also expected to integrate on mobile phones in the near future. Push to talk is not like making a phone call. Users will not have to dial to get connected. It is similar to the idea of a walkie-talkie, but can get connected to another user in another side of the world. The size and outlook of mobile phones are also plays an important role for the mobile phone. Thus, many concept mobile phones brought out by the manufacturers now are all very fashionable and colourful. As for the size of mobile phones, concepts such as whist phones and mini sized.
Other concepts brought out by the researchers include remote-controlling a car via a mobile phones, holophones (mobile phones that project three-dimensional moving images of the users). These concepts are expected to be brought out in the next 15-20 years (Dornan, 2000).
9.Mobile Phone Technology - Disadvantages
The development of mobile phones brought convenient and advantages to the world. Communication between people and people are easier and fast. Though, the disadvantages brought along with the fast grown technology cannot be ignored. These problems not only influenced people personally but also the society.
Symptoms caused by the radiation of mobile phones are one of the most argued problems. Many scientists believe that the radiation from the mobile phones may cause the users to have different symptoms such as headache, earaches, blurring of vision and even causing cancer. Though, these problems are still under research. Mobile phone users are advice to reduce the usage on mobile phones if it is possible.
Mobile phone addiction is a big social problem. Psychiatrists believe that mobile phone addiction is becoming one of the biggest non-drug addictions in the 21st century. Along with the age drop of the mobile phone users and the ease of prepaid method provide by the system operators, most teenagers now own their own mobile phone and network service. Teenagers are engaged on their mobile phones all the time, no matter on phone calls, using SMS text messages, personalising the mobile phones with ringtones and pictures etc. Besides this, many people are running after the lastest mobile phones. New models of mobile phones are released almost everyday. In order to get up-to-date, people tend to change their mobile phones once in a while. These became habits among the mobile phone users causing them to spend unnecessary cost on mobile bills and costs.
Cyber bullying is also another issue among the disadvantages of mobile phones. Cyber bullying is a bullying act using offensive words and behavior via online chatting, emails or SMS text messages. It was showed that the psychological effects of cyber bullying are much severe that face-to-face bullying. This problem now is among teenagers especially the secondary students.








10.Conclusion
There are still many problems causing but the new technology. Mobile phones with camera functions are causing privacy problems. Saudi Arabia had banned camera phones through out the country while many countries are concern about this problem. This is because many people have misused the usage on the camera phones such as using it as a hidden camera to take photos which are private. The spreading on computer viruses is also a problem for this new technology. Just like computer viruses, these viruses will affect the normal usage on mobile phones making them to malfunction and causing destructions.