Japanesse style...

So the HTC EVO 4G launched today. I'd like to take a second to highlight how this phone is going to be a unique specimen in cell phone evolution. It has two cellular radios. One for 3G service which is pretty ubiquitous at this point and one that works with Spring's new WiMAX system which is only available in select cities. This phone is the most capable phone on the planet because it is the only phone that has the hardware, software, and network capability to engage in video conferencing. This is a huge step from what Alexander Graham Bell developed in 1875. But Ironically this device will use this capability the least out of the tons of other things it can do. Simply because communication is a two way street. There has to be another person with an equally capable device to make this work. Since the EVO is the only one, there will be very few options for using this. Not only that but both callers have to be in the right city, that and they won't be able to chat for that long since the 4G radio and the bandwidth necessary for video conferencing are both extremely battery heavy. Don't get me wrong i think this technological direction is inevitably awesome and will be common place in 2 years. But now that Froyo can give you 100% of the internet in the palm of your hand the bulk effort of the market needs to shift. The software and hardware of the mobile world has been shot out of a cannon in the 2 years and has left both the communication infrastructure and the power supply technologies in the dust. Again i don't want to give the wrong impression. I think it's great that i all i have to consider before trying something on my phone is "is this activity worth the battery?" not "i wonder if my phone will be able to do this". It's like doing a steam vs. recovery or overhead purity study on a LPG fractionation column every time i decide to turn on the GPS for some reason. The fact that the software has out developed the infrastructure is really no surprise. I may be making a novice statement but to me Software engineering is different from all other disciplines because there are no physical unknowns. It is all a matter of generating the right code. The other disciplines are always struggling with discovering and understanding nature and the properties of materials and chemical and electrical systems. In fact years of engineering research can be exhausted only to find out that the original idea is not physically or economically possible, safe, or economically feasible. This is where the phrase "back to the drawing board". This is why the battery and the cell phone towers are now the limit to what we can do with mobile technology, these technologies rely on manipulating things in the physical world rather than the virtual world. The EVO 4G is a great step in mobile technology, but by the time the support systems necessary to facilitate everything it can do have caught up, this device will be a thing of the past.