Here's what we want from new smartphones
My phone may be mobile, but the custom dictionary on it certainly isn't — just one more thing the mobile industry on its way to the annual Mobile World Congress could tackle.
Anyone who’s ever upgraded to a new smartphone – that’s, like, all of us, right? – understands this frustration. We all have unique work lingo, slang and inside jokes. A buddy of mine and I, for example, text each other “MGE,” which is our Bat signal for “I’m hungry. Want to grab dinner?” It’s an acronym: “Man’s Gotta Eat.” And my girlfriend and I use “IKR,” which is personal shorthand for “I know, right?”
No keyboard enhancement app I’ve ever met, including Swype, which I use now, has allowed me to wrap my custom dictionary in newsprint and pack it into the moving van. Instead, I’ve spent the last six weeks with a new smartphone adding words to a new custom dictionary that still can’t hold a candle to the one stuck inside my last phone.
Samsung phone, China, Facebook are big deals at Mobile World Congress
Are you listening, smartphone industry? You should be. As you converge on Barcelona for Mobile World Congress, the industry’s flagship event, you face a challenging business climate. Sales have flattened because most of us already have smartphones, and have-to-upgrade features are harder to come by.
So here's what we want: make the upgrade process painless. Upgrade the user experience. There’s plenty of room for improvement. If you do, we’ll come shopping again. We will.
Making our custom dictionary portable would help. But it’s just the first item on my list of demands. Here are three more:
All-day battery life: Riddle me this: what’s worse than not having all-day battery life on your smartphone? Answer: Having it for the first three weeks you own a phone, and then never again.
It’s happened with every smartphone I’ve ever owned. My new phone is from Huawei, the Chinese electronics giant. Battery life was enormous. Two days’ worth. Two days! I was so excited, I even tweeted about it.
But ever since, I’ve been watching battery life dwindle as apps settle in and suck more power and stymie the phone’s ability to sleep. Android 6.0 gives you a lot more control over power-hungry apps. So I’ve taken some of it back. But it takes a lot of trial and error to get what you want out of your apps and still maintain good battery life. One thing I’ve learned: Give the Facebook app an inch and it takes a mile. So don’t.
Privacy button: There are so many permissions, we don’t have any idea which app has rights to see what. But we’re not going to spend time figuring it out. We’re just going to worry about it. And trust the phone less than we otherwise might.
So Give us a Cone of Silence button – something that, when pushed, ensures no other app can see what we’re doing. It would feel good to have one of those once in a while.
Personal assistant: Speaking of privacy, it’s dawned on most of us that the smartphone has more than enough sensors, radios and smarts to know us even better than we know ourselves. So prove to us that you intend to use it for good and not evil. Gain our trust. Show us you’re watching out for us. Show us you’re worthy of more responsibility.
You could start out by acting as the guardian of our precious data. Be the privacy button, Danny! Figure out what we might not want to share, and offer to shield it for us.
A really good personal digital assistant could also watch how we use the phone, and then control permissions so we get what we want out of our apps – and also great battery life. It could also carry our custom dictionary with us when we get a new phone.
Come to think about it, we don’t need four things. We really only need this one thing. And with device sales growth dwindling, you, smartphone industry, might really need it too.
Mike Feibus is principal analyst at FeibusTech, a Scottsdale, Ariz., market strategy and analysis firm focusing on mobile ecosystems and client technologies. Reach him at mikef@feibustech.com. Follow him on Twitter @MikeFeibus.