Ever have a problem with a cell phone call and you know what I mean. Your reception fades or you lose the call unexpectedly. There’s so many ways to describe what’s going on and the reasons can vary from excessive cell phone traffic on the cell tower closest to you or inadequate partitioning with your mobile service provider. In the past these were the most common sources of dropped calls and that will continue to happen as our wireless companies upgrade to the new 3G and 4G or LTE standards. Until that day arrives expect lots of the same. Yet an old culprit is here to add to our cell call woes so much so that many of us are thinking back to the days when we had land-lines, which is a good topic to cover in a future post, but that’s not the point here. No, the newest cause du Jour has little to do with the service providers and much more with the interaction of people with their phones, Interference.

So let’s focus on the word for a moment. We all know what it’s like to interfere. If you’re a football fan, you know all about pass interference, that’s when a defender prevents a receiver from catching a fair pass. Well in that way we have a similar problem with our cellular phones. People, us, are getting in the way of our phone calls. Now, in all fairness to us, we’re without fault, mostly. You see, the problem of radio frequency interference is an over simple way of describing what’s really going on because it extends into the aesthetics, economics, and technologies of creating a phone that we love to use and performs to our expectations.

Take aesthetics and Apple’s iPhone 4. You’ve no doubt heard word of mouth reports, maybe read an article like this one, or saw a compelling video that showed what happens when using the phone. If you haven’t then let me describe the problem like this, you take your iPhone 4 and make a call and slowly you lose reception until zip, call dropped. You might initially think like I would that AT&T must be overburdened with lots of calls and from 2000 to 2008 that might have been the case because post 911 the government took up huge amounts of bandwidth in the search for terrorists, but they found none. And at any moment, the government make snatch the airwaves again, but I’m neither anti-government nor a conspiracy hack, it’s just a plain fact that what the man needs, the man takes!

So wait let me get back on topic of looks. You see Apple is famous for eye pleasing designs, owners of any of their PCs will know what I mean. Apple makes products look good with great performance too, right? Well, their driving motivation is to let their industrial (style) designers have a final say in product development. It’s worked so well with their latest iPod, the iPad, and of course the iPhone.

So what do looks have to do with dropped calls?

It’s not an easy answer, but let me try to explain. Embedded inside your cell phone is a snug little circuit board, full of microchips, electronic parts, and antennas for sending and receiving wireless signals. When connected together these little devices allow you and me to make our phone calls. In order to make that happen we need a cell phone circuit designer. That cool designer dude or hip dudette will line up the chips and parts, making them work at their best and if left alone they’ll give you a circuit board that works, but it may be ugly. The problem at Apple is likely that their industrial designers didn’t like the first iPhone 4 circuit. In that first design, the antennas may have been on the back of the phone or on the top or well wherever the circuit designers knew would be out of the way of our hands whenever we made a phone call. But that’s not how design works at Apple. Their industrial designers are about making products that are beautiful inside and out. In the case of the iPhone 4 they symmetrically integrated the antennas into the outer case where we normally put our hands to make a call. We get in the way. The interference – our hands and bodies – block the iPhone 4′s reception. So who’s fault is that? Easy to figure right? Right.

Now take economics. In Apple’s case there a solution. Put the antennas out of the way of us. Problem solved. But that’s not the case with every cell phone maker. Often because of the design, there’s no getting around putting the antennas where we get in the way. What then? Let’s use the football analogy from above again. Most football teams are smart to have more than one receiver out on the football field in the case where a defender is blocking one of the receivers then the quarterback can choose another receiver. Or if they’ve got just one receiver then why not get the tallest and biggest one possible? That way the defenders (blockers) can’t affect him. Well in cellphones it’s possible to use more than one antenna or to make the antenna larger! The concept like in football is called redundancy. Redundancy helps create back up solutions. Here’s where we get into economics. In order to provide a phone that’s got more than one antenna or even a big antenna, the cell phone maker has to spend more on the technologies (antenna, microchips, and electronics). In the end we end up paying more $$$ for that phone. Who wouldn’t mind paying more for better reception? More than 50% of America, that’s who. We like getting our phones for free with a two year contract and if they charge us $100 who cares as long as we get a good phone. Our “who cares” reply changes when we’re told that we have to pay $30o and still have a two year commitment. In Apple’s case, their iPhone 4 might cost as much as $500 with more antennas. Aha, you’re getting it now.

Well, there’s one last issue at play. We touched on it with antennas. Extra antennas cost $$$ and we the buying public end up paying for the enhancements. But there’s another way that’s still a bit costly, but not so much. Like in football, if a team has just one receiver and he’s not a 7 foot tall phenomenon then what? You get a receiver that’s got talent and most important agility. A great receiver can escape a good defender and still make the catch. Great receivers, you know their names, also play quarterback from time to time. What about blocking. If one receiver can make a catch, what’s to stop his teammate from blocking the safety (defender) from getting in the way. Well in cell electronics it turns out that there are technologies such as filters that act to block out unwanted interference, but they’re costly and take up space. Better still are technologies that let the cellphone tune its antennas in much the same way that a great receiver knows to get around a defender. These tuning circuits, called tunable matching networks, make the antennas compensate when we hold the phone or when there’s something else interfering with a call. The tunable technology is still kind of new, but when it hits volume production, it’ll allow Apple and others to put their antennas wherever they want, even for looks.

Interference, like I described it here, is a far too simple of a description of the problem. There are other issues like inter-modulation and close proximity cross coupling and so on. The bottom line is that as cell phones become more and more like pieces of art, which we expect to work like our personal computers, we will see more problems with dropped calls OR we’ll have to get used to the idea of paying more money for technologies that work every time. I predict that Apple’s iPhone 4 will be the one of the last phones where this is a problem. Why? Well, most cell phone makers are smart, they understand the problem of interference and they don’t care if a phone isn’t pretty on the inside (if the outside looks nice) as long as it works. Even then, as we get access to 4G and LTE we’re going to see the problem more and more. Apple’s mistake is a free lesson for Motorola, HTC, Samsung, RIM, and LG. If they’re smart, they won’t do as Apple did. They’ll let the circuit designers do their job and if there’s no getting around the problem of interference then they’ll have to use the new technologies I mentioned in order to make their phones work and that means we pay more. I guarantee it.

Amidst all the hoopla about the Apple iPad (insert favorite joke here), a bit of news refuses to slip through the cracks. Playing wide by on-line  tech magazines is the idea of using a VOIP application such as Skype or iCall on your smart phone. The question is why?

Cost.

If you have a on-going Skype membership, which only costs you around $3.00 a month and have built-in WiFi on your celly then you have the capability of cutting costs on your cell service. You could choose to go with the absolute cheapest phone service possible and make most your cell calls via VOIP. With this kind of technology, you can also receive calls, as long as you’re within range of a WiFi router or repeater. Smart right?

Well, the problem so far is that cell service providers hate this idea, because it threatens to cost them big $. Carriers make their money on getting you on either: 1. overages or 2. a cell service that’s more than what you need. It’s that simple. What makes the problem a bigger deal is that the smart phone makers are slow in allowing VOIP providers to access (install their apps) on the latest 3G phones.

And it gets better.

MagicJack, that little company who’s USB dongle let’s you connect your old land-line phone to your PC, announced in December a new device that let’s you use your standard GSM cell phone at home at no cost per call. Their system is a de-facto femto cell which uses VOIP as the background and a low power GSM base station. It’ll cost around $40 for the device and $20 a year after for the service (about $1.67 a month).

As you can see, these applications and devices will put a dent into cell company revenues, which has been a long time in coming. Cell service providers have long over-charged subscribers for their services and now consumers have choices. One would hope that it only gets better.

Windows Mobile, the grand-dad of all smart phone Operating Systems is slated to get an update to version 7. Not to sound like I’m in the dark, but does anyone still use a Window’s powered smart phone? With Nokia dominating worldwide cell phone sales then there’s RIM, the iPhone, and various versions of Google phones out there who would want to use such outdated technology. Unless like their desktop version, Microsoft’s mobile OS will finally find it’s own? Perhaps.

There are easily five or more competing smart phone OS’s available today. Symbian, RIM, Apple, and now Google appear to be the top runners. Microsoft used to be and anyone who owned an MS Mobile powered phone will tell you all about bugs. So why persist if market preferences have moved on. The best guess is that MS has found a way to stabilize the OS and make phones powered by the device run faster than ever. One can hope.

The smart phone and the PC appear to be heading toward not so distant collision course. If MS, Apple, or Google realize this, they will be thinking not about separate OS’s, but a single unified platform. Google appears to have grasped this with the announcement of Google powered netbooks (more to follow soon). Microsoft and Apple would be smart to see this trend.

The new Windows Mobile OS may end up being their best ever, but this MS after all. They’re constantly upgrading and tweaking any of the OS’s. Own a PC with Vista? Then you know what I mean. Apple appears to have the only company releasing stable OS’s because they use intensive in-house testing and only occasionally release upgrades. The rest use massive consumer bases as their test beds (why no-one’s rebelled against this is a massive surprise on its own).

No matter how well Windows 7 Mobile performs, be assured that you’re phone will be downloading upgrades on a regular basis. It wouldn’t be a Microsoft experience otherwise. Bet on it.

Was it too much to wish for another Jesus gadget from the almighty Apple? Well perhaps it was. In the wake of the new iPad, things don’t seem all that better. Sure the sun is shining (somewhere), but the reaction out on the blogosphere isn’t quite as far reaching as the iPhone. But wait.

Looking back, the reaction to the iPhone seemed a bit mild as well, then came the next generations of the device and wow did things change. Perhaps that’s the plan from good old Apple, intro a mildly exciting device and then make it better through iterations. If it survives, the iPad will only get better and that’s worth hanging out to see more.

In 2007, Google acquired a company called GrandCentral. The purchase seemed to herald Google’s move into what may otherwise be a unique business. Subsequent to that they changed the name of the application to Google Voice. Today they announced that they’d this interesting technology would be available to smartphone users. So what gives?

The GrandCentral application allows Google to offer users a unique phone number to which anyone can call and you can route to any phone of your choice. In fact, it can route to a land-line, a cell phone, office number, and so on. You can even use the service to make the call for you with a click of your mouse and your phone will ring when the call connects.

So what’s so cool about this? Besides having a universal voice mail system – for free? Remember that they assign you a unique phone number? You can use this number for any reason say for instance to start up a small business with low initial expenses, but with a separate phone number for now. You can set up a Google Voice account and have all your small business calls routed to your Google Voice number. Now, this isn’t an ideal small business strategy if your business grows and you want to write off your business calls because you might need a dedicated phone number to reference when tax time comes around. The benefit is to get yourself started while masking your current phone number. For that reason, I’ve signed up and will look to use my Google Voice account until I’m ready to use a dedicated number to make and receive calls.

Of course there’s also Skype for that as well.

For the longest time, I wondered what possible good could come out of the merger between two also-ran(s). The potential for the combined company to grab a number two slot (in cell phone sales) behind Nokia stood solid until in 2007. Then Apple released the iPhone and changed the landscape of an all inclusive phone, forever. So this week Sony Ericsson announced another disappointing quarter. Big deal?

Well yes it is. Sony has a place in history, being that they invented portable music and along with Nintendo took on portable gaming as well. They were on a roll. So what happened? The competition, Apple, took them to the cleaners. As a response to keep ahead of the Cupertino media monster, they partnered with Ericsson, a respectable, but second place runner in cell phone manufacturing. Their efforts resulted in less than spectacular phone designs and that’s a shame.

Sony is a well diversified company, they make great consumer electronics, but a visit to the Ericsson website shows that they make no mention of their phone division. Like other companies, Sony Ericsson has jumped on the large 3.5 inch touch screen movement started by Apple. They offer some very interesting phones like their Xperia x10 and Vivaz phones which offer 8.1 Megapixel cameras. Wow! So why haven’t these marvels made a splash in the US? Maybe it’s because they’re not offered here yet? Maybe Americans are too caught up in the ongoing cold war between Apple and Google? Maybe.

As Sony Ericsson loses more money, they may find international markets more lucrative or the company may fail. Doubtful, but it’s possible. While the US considers itself the center of the consumerist universe, it is best to remember that if this country loses one more cell phone competitor then it gives Apple and Google all the more power to steer our technology preferences in any direction they desire. Consumers need more competition to force companies to offer even fresher and more tantalizing ways to spend our money.

Cellular phones are full of a variety of peripheral functions. Cameras, personal planners, games, and of course navigation. A year or so ago, the first entries into phone navigation relied on Google maps in some way or the other. Now, even the latest Google phones come standard with GPS built in and many reports show that their performance approaches that of low end hand held GPS units. There’s rumors that Apple will release a better performing GPS phone over the next year or two, which supports the idea that with GPS on your do-everything smart phone, why use anything else?

Nokia, still the world-wide leader in cellular phone sales, announced today that they will offer free turn-by-turn GPS on several of their upcoming smart phones. On first look, their N97 phone resembles the iPhone in many ways, but without all the iPhone apps and appeal. Nokia does rather well in Europe and everywhere other than the US with smart and standard cell phone sales. Reports indicate that Nokia will be working with Tom Tom and Garmin for these new phone offerings.

So skeptics will first say, what about reception and power usage? Typical GPS chip sets are now a few square millimeters in size and are manufactured from sub 100nm silicon technology. They sip power when in use because after all, GPS units need only to receive or “listen” for a signal from three or more GPS satellites to figure out where the unit is located. The only problem comes with antenna size and location on the receiving unit. Standard GPS systems have a nice sized antenna that either swivels out from the back (car units) or are built into the body of the receiver (hand-held versions & some car units). The iPhone and it’s look alikes hide their antennas under the unit’s case. Such a form-factor tends to limit the size and visibility of the GPS antenna and makes it harder to receive location information. Apple’s iPhone 3GS needs both additional software and an optional booster for it to work as a turn-by-turn navigation device.

Today, both the hardware and software stand as challenges for smart phone makers to provide standard turn-by-turn GPS on their phones. Google’s Droid phones seems to have it beat. 2010 will be the year where we’ll see GPS for the masses either from Apple, Nokia, Droid or the other smart phone makers. By 2012, it’ll be standard on any smart phone available and in a way will eventually replace hand-held units. In 2009 Magellan  teamed up with Apple to offer a packaged solution, while Garmin and Novifone came up with an iPhone form factor clone called the M10. The other GPS companies will need team up with phone makers to keep their hand held business units alive.

Only Garmin offers sea-faring GPS, which makes them somewhat diversified, but when compared to the mass consumer market, they and other consumer GPS receiver makers don’t have much choice, but to find their way into a smart phone of some kind. Better now than never.

Verizon Wireless and AT&T announced today that they’d be dropping prices on their unlimited individual and family talk plans to $70 and $150 respectively. While this is a long time in coming, the fact is that their services are still over-priced. That’s right. If meager performing providers like T-Mobile and tiny Cricket Wireless can provide unlimited talk and text messaging for around $40 then you’ve got to agree that the giants do well by their customers.

It’s correct to say that the smaller competitors have a lot less over-head and can therefore assume the smaller profit margins. Even so, at a time when unemployment sits above 10% every wireless service provider is likely to have fewer employees to burden profitability. With MBA managers driving cost cutting / profit driving measures with every business on the planet, its safe to assume either Verizon or AT&T can afford to drive costs lower still.

So what’s the point of the token move? Maybe to quiet the masses. Consumers need a champion like Ralph Nader to drive down prices. Whatever happened to Ralph anyway? The hero of American consumerism got into politics and didn’t look back. Too bad for America and too bad for our wallets.

Cellular phone customers pay too much for the service. As land-line telephony goes into the history books, we should demand more. How many more services can they possibly provide? TV’s covered. Internet as well. Texting and voice are standard pieces of the package.

Here’s a message to AT&T and Verizon- Give us a real price war, not a token move.