Communications - January 2009

Technology | DOI:10.1145/1435417.1435423
Alex Wright

Get Smart

Future generations of smartphones will be context aware,
tracking your behavior, providing information about
the immediate environment, and anticipating your intentions.

Even the most souped-up devices amount to little more

today’s smart-

THE PROBLEM WITH phones is that there’s nothing terribly smart about them.

than stripped-down PCs, with tiny screens and maddening keyboards. The era of the PC-in-your-pocket may soon give way to a new type of smartphone, however, that is less of a portable work-station and more of a personal digital assistant that anticipates what you need

Enkin, a 3D navigation system built for Google’s Android, provides a live mode via a video to know, and when. feed (left), a landscape mode (top right), and a map mode.

The next generation of context-aware
smartphones will take advantage of the The result will be a type of portable data droid—takes advantage of location data
growing availability of built-in physical X-ray device that reveals information to allow users to scan the physical envi-
sensors and better data exchange capa- about any location at which you point ronment using GPS and compass data.
bilities to support new applications that your phone. In live mode, it works with a phone’s
not only keep track of your personal San Francisco-based GeoVectorisone built-in camera to project onscreen an-
data, but can also track your behavior of several new companies developing notations of physical locations atop a
and—this is where the truly smart part software to take advantage of more ac- live video feed, by querying a database
will finally come into play—anticipate curate location-sensing data. “We want oflocationdata tagged with latitude and
your intentions. to convert the phone into a virtual mouse longitude coordinates. So, if you point
Many smartphones already contain that you can use to click on the real the device at a hospital building, the
the basic building blocks for context world,” says Pam Kerwin, GeoVector’s term “Hospital” appears superimposed
awareness such as physical sensors, like head of strategic business development. over the video image in real time.

GPS, accelerometers, andlightsensors, Using a combination of latitude and While advanced location awareness coupled with operating systems that al- longitude data, provided by GPS, and in- will open up new avenues for application low developers to create their own appli- formation about the user’s orientation, development, this kind of physical sens-cations. What’s missing, ho wever, has which is gleaned from an electronic com- ing constitutes the most simplistic level been the middleware that will enable pass, the software creates a virtual vector of context awareness. As smartphone applications to juxtapose information that can superimpose location-specific platforms mature, they will start to merge about your physical location with data data on a mobile phone screen. physical location data with information from other applications. “A lot of the Similarly, Enkin—a 3D navigation about user behavior—drawn from cal-basic technology has existed for years,” application based on Google’s An- endars, email, text messages, and other says Erick Tseng, product manager for applications—to begin modeling your Google’s Android. “The challenge has intentions. “The trend is toward long been that developers didn’t really have chains of integration,” says Dulaney.

Future smartphones

access to those devices.” For example, a context-aware phone The first wave of context-aware ap- might know that you’re sitting inside a will provide information

IMAGE COURTESY OF MAX BRAUN & RAFAEL SPRING

plications will focus on pulling in data movie theater and automatically mute via a live video feed

keyed to the user’s physical location. itself. And if your calendar knows that about locations

“Your phone is going to be a sensor,” you’re about to leave for a meeting on says Ken Dulaney, a distinguished ana- the other side of town, your phone could

at which the phone

lyst at Gartner Group. Equipped with query a public traffic database and deter-

is pointed.

magnetic compasses, accelerometers, mine that you’re going to be gridlocked, and GPS, smartphones will begin to sup- then notify colleagues that you’ll be deport augmented reality applications that layed. Or if you’re traveling and it’s din-draw on detailed information about the nertime, your smartphone might sug-location and orientation of your phone. gest a nearby restaurant based on your