If applications can tolerate some amount of staleness, which, surprisingly, a huge percentage of practically needed applications can, then all you need to:
* reduce battery consumption
* mitigate scalability issues due to chatty interaction
* bandwidth consumption

is to place smart caches for the browser's data needs. One of the challenges for the operation of these caches is the need for a synchronization protocol. Just like the Web has provided one data transfer paradigm, we need a simple and general synchronization protocol designed for use in Web browser based applications. Then you can have your cake and eat it too (most of the times).

Peter,

I think you're reasoning is almost entirely wrong.

You are right that you can do all these things with the browser.

However:

• bug count goes up (more lines of code, not less, and much more infrastructure to go wrong)
• UI gets worse (less flexibility)
• performance takes a big hit (not just because of interpreted processing -- which history shows has never been popular on client devices -- but also all the extra wireless traffic)
• battery takes a big hit (see performance)
• reliability takes a big hit (all that extra infrastructure)
• scalability takes a big hit (both in bandwidth and server capacity)

The history of computing shows that these things are all important, and that everything that can migrate out to the client, will do so.

Sorry, but it appears that you have got it completely back to front.

See here for a more complete analysis.

Skyfire sounds great, but since there's no Nokia version yet, there is still no solution for video and audio inside the browser.

Good thinking, Peter.

I just finished reading "The Big Switch" by Nicholas Carr (recommended!!). In one chapter that discussed in essence the same subject, there was a quote by Eric Schmidt from 1993: "When the network becomes as fast as the processor, the computer hollows out and spreads across the network."

Quite a prediction.

As it happens, this is now happening fast in the PC world. The network is fast enough, and bandwidth abundant. PC:s are hollowing out, and the browser (and rich internet apps) are becoming the primary means of using PC = apps and services located in the cloud.

But I don't believe this process is happening as fast in the mobile world. Even though the networks are becoming faster, and even if we would assume a ubiquitous-flat-fee-data world, there are fundamental limitations:
1. battery life (network connection is the worst power hog out there)
2. total network bandwidth (do the wireless networks - and their operators - really have capacity for the future you envisage?)
3. latency (often ruins the user experience)

Therefore, I don't expect mobile software & local storage to disappear anytime soon. I expect them to coexist along with the browser/cloud based apps and services, for quite a long time.

Still, this is an interesting vision - and one that a certain company from Mountain View is likely to pursue aggressively.

My view is admittedly US-centric; that's where I live. The mobile phone experience here differs quite a bit from Europe. In the US, moving from one carrier to another is not easy at all, and almost always requires replacing your hardware. US consumers generally purchase phones directly from the carrier, and each carrier has a fairly limited offering. If you have access to the US magazine "Consumer Reports", read the mobile phone coverage in the January issue. Their advice: pick a carrier, then choose a phone offered by that carrier. Symbian was dismissed as "more difficult to use than others". Ouch.

Krisse
Its arguable that the competition between ISPs has got so fierce that the quality has actually gone down. Having worked for ISPs and seen the service offerings go up and the costs being pushed down, I've seen how the QOS suffers in the name of a marketable product. However, opening it up as a good idea for the US market. COmpetition in Eu has already brought broadband prices down, increased the service offerings and increased availability.

The very serious problem of battery life still exists though and will not be fixed, can not be fixed soon. We're talking about the same issues that affect UMPCs. BAttery life is in the order of 1-2 hours for always-on internet if you run any sort of internet-connected background app. Battery capacity will not increase by anything more than 10-15% per year for the next 3 years and increases in silicon efficiency will be used to push the processing power of the devices up to an acceptable standard.

Unless you want to carry a device about that is the size of an OQO, you will not get enough battery life. This is the reason i'm looking forward to MID's. I'll seperate my internet activities onto a different device that has enough battery life to be running a few background internet apps for many more hours than on a smartphone. I need a keyboard and decent 4" screen anyway so again, the smartphone is a no-go for any detailed internet based work.

Regards
Steve.

There's no need for phone makers to partner with infrastructure operators at all.

Do PC or web designers work with broadband ISPs? No, so why should phone designers?

The phone networks simply need to provide a reliable internet connection, and as long as people can switch easily from one operator to another then competition will keep the quality of that connection high. The phone networks will soon improve their service if customers start leaving them.

That's what happens with broadband ISPs, that's what does happen with mobile ISPs if people are allowed to easily move from one to the other without locked devices and long contracts.

The reason Apple has partnered with the phone networks is absolutely nothing to do with "user experience", it's purely because it generates lots more profits than hardware sales alone. The phone networks hate sharing their profits, and the only reason some did it with Apple was because they got exclusive rights to sell a fashionable handset.

Incidentally, we did an article on this very topic for All About Symbian a while ago:

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/Will_smartphones_need_anything_more_than_a_browser.php

Have you folks seen Skyfire.com? With that browser, you can play multimedia through the browser such as YouTube or Pandora so that issue is now moot.

Posted by: Raj | February 22, 2008 06:49 AM

Have you folks seen Skyfire.com? With that browser, you can play multimedia through the browser such as YouTube or Pandora so that issue is now moot.

while i agree the browser can be a swiss army knife in terms of capabilities, it isn't rich enough to do the many things that require more horsepower such as multimedia or access to the disk.

operating systems, even the easy ones, are still too difficult to code for, for the common web developer at least.

the middle road, the new battle (imho) will be in web run times. between adobe's air, microsoft's silverlight, mozilla's prism and whatever nokia intends to do with Qt, we're in for yet another huge battle that will cause even more fragmentation before the dust settles and we have a 2 party system like we do today with mac's and pc's.

As mentioned, a browser cant play music and video as that is handed off to other software but....its a great test you've done there.
I use this process on the desktop and the only software that I still need to install is...actually nothing. XP comes with everything needed including video editing and photo editing now.

One major major problem with this is, as you identified, the data connection.

I did a little test recently to highlight the problem of using a mobile phone (an N82 in the case) as an always-on mobile internet device.
Take a look at how big the phone needs to be!

http://www.carrypad.com/journal/2008/02/how-big-is-mobile-internet-smartphone.html

Not only is the screen size and input method a problem for smartphones but battery life too! The only way to do this mobile internet activity for the next year or so is to use a second, bigger device.

Regards
Steve / Chippy.

As mobile browsers become more powerful, this is going to become a common theme - although I'm wondering how most devices are going to watch video and listen to music through the browser, since they rely on other software to actually play such content...

Sadly, I don't think I am alone in not trusting all these online services with my personal data. Seems to me, though, that younger generations are caring less about that.

Meantime, I'll stick with avoiding things like Plaxo, Google Docs etc :-)

Hello Peter,

Great line of reasoning!

Please tell me which phone could handle the Google docs with your browser?

Is there a chance that the E70 could use Google docs?

Thanks & Regards!
Aron

p.s.: Just a bit off topic question: Do you know a text file reader for s60 which could handle a 4.5 MB text file? (other than X-plore)