The road ahead for mobile phones

The road ahead for mobile phones

Level 1: Have grey LCD screens and support GSM or CDMA. Some models support WAP, but these are mainly used for calls/SMS. Advantage: Simplicity, Size.
Example phone: Nokia 3310/3330.

Level 1.5: Level 1 plus some cool stuff, but not enough of them.
Example : Siemens C55 has GPRS, but only a monochrome screen and no MMS.

Level 2: "Multimedia Mobiles".

These have
Color Screen
Camera: Integrated or Attachment
MMS - Multimedia Messaging
J2ME - Java games
WAP 1.2.1 (needed for MMS)
Tri-band/GPRS/Higher speed CDMA
Polyphonic Sound
Are generally heavier than the Level 1.

Level 2.5: "Multimedia Plus". Add the following to the level 2 package

Bluetooth
MP3/FM Radio/Stereo Playback
WAP2/XHTML-MP
Email Client
PC Sync / SyncML / iSync
3G Connection

Level 3: Intelliphones. These are no different from small computers. They have almost all the capabilities of Multimedia Phones. In addition, they normally have an few hundred Mhz processor, a real OS (Symbian, Palm, Linux, M$), a real file system and more memory and/or expansion slots. You can install custom software on these phones like on your PDA, and do everything from play multi-player Bluetooth 3D video games to using a real web browser or viewing streaming video.
Example phones: Nokia 3650, SonyEricsson P800.

Level 3.5: "Intelliphone Plus". None in the market yet, but will be Intelliphones plus the higher bandwidth of 3G or WiFi or with GPS or with megapixel cameras, etc. Samsung's coming Symbian-based 3G phone will fit this category.

Level 4: "Future Phones". The phones some ad's show. Don't exist and not likely to exist for atleast 5 years.

802.11 is the name of a standard for computer communication over radio waves, commonly called Wi-Fi

Bluetooth is a lower bandwidth, shorter ranger version of 802.11b

3G (3rd generation) - technology is based on the packet-based transmission of text, data - such as audio, video and digital voice - at a very high speed. It will greatly enhance the mobile communication services, providing always-on connectivity to phones and other wireless devices, no matter where they are in the world.

WCDMA( Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) is the leading 3G standard. It is designed to operate in a different frequency band from those used for GSM networks.

General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) halfway mark on the journey to 3G. Over GPRS, data is transmitted via IP based networks in short bursts thus allowing users to have an always on data stream for their favourite services, faster than on current GSM networks.

EDGE (Enhanced Data for Global Evolution), delivers data at rates up to 384 Kbps and enable the delivery of multimedia and other broadband applications to the mobile users.

J2ME is a version of Java designed for Mobile Devices

1G:first analog cellular systems, which started early 1980s
2G (GSM, cdmaOne) : first digital cellular systems launched early 1990s
2.5G (GPRS, cdma2000 1x) : enhanced versions of 2G networks. Upto 144kbps.
3G (WCDMA, EDGE,) Upto 384kbps