There’s no shortage of tablet devices available today, and demand for them seems pretty high. Scanning through Engadget, it seems like we’ve got a good stock coming in the future, too. The problem, as I see it, is that the future tablets that everyone is so excited about are exciting (at least to media outlets like Engadget) for the wrong reasons.
Tablet onlookers seem enticed by the latest versions of operating systems, faster processors, and additional cell network capabilities. The latest versions of iOS and Android certainly are improvements over prior versions, but they don’t add anything groundbreaking or genre-defining to the fundamental features of a tablet. Faster processors are nice of course, but they also tempt battery drain, which is an essential, oft-overlooked feature of a tablet. The latest LTE connections are certainly alluring as our dependence on the cloud and correlating bandwidth needs increase, though the dependence on cell networks and their high-cost plans are strange things to look forward to. I think there are other things that we should concentrate on for producing the “fundamental tablet”.
What you see
There’s no denying that the Amazon Kindle is one of the best eBook readers on the market, and in my opinion, the best. It does so many things right. The size is perfect. The battery life is great. The WiFi connectivity is convenient. And although the display technology is pretty good, it could be improved.
The black and white display of the Kindle is a high quality e-ink screen. The screen of high-contrast, high-density black and white pixels is able to retain its state with a low- or no-power charge, and it’s visible in ambient light. The combination of high resolution with low power consumption is what makes it so attractive. Nonetheless, the problems with it are obvious: The refresh rate on the screen is too slow, and the device does not display color.
The technology I’ve been looking at to replace it has been available for a while, and there even have been rumors that Amazon is looking into using it for their next generation e-reader. The technology is produced by Qualcomm and is called Mirasol. Mirasol retains the e-ink properties of low power consumption, high resolution, and daylight visibility, but adds color and a high refresh rate. The screens look a little odd because they’re not what we’re used to - LCD screens with bright, energy-eating backlights projecting images on our eyes - but they’re easy to grow accustomed to.
Consider the form factor of the Kindle, also. It’s small and lightweight, yet still contains all of the basic functionality of most tablets, being the ability to display data and to connect wirelessly to the internet. While an iPad may have more functionality, it weighs significantly more and is larger, and is only separated in functionality by what the Kindle allows its users to do and the capability of its processor. This is why I’m kind of disappointed by the recent announcement of the Android-based, backlit Kindle, since it almost certainly uses LCD.
How it works
The world needs a real tablet operating system. That’s really all there is to it. Even though iOS and Android are running the game, neither are really well suited to the task. iOS was built with the iPod and iPhone in mind, and is great at playing minigame apps. But iOS apps don’t talk to each other in an integrated way that would make them so much more useful. Android suffers from a number of problems, the most significant of which is the uninspired - and similar to early Linux operating systems - user experience design, not to mention the citadel-like app stores depending on which stingy manufacturer you obtained your device from.
Perhaps the best suited of the available mobile OSes for tablet use is WebOS, whose only hope of being useful in the future is if HP opens it to the world. Otherwise, it’s a death brought on too soon by complete and utter mismanagement. WebOS had done something very right in providing API access to pluggable cloud services for its application developers. This allowed the apps to work with each other and with services that were off the device, which would be essential to any underpowered handheld.
I can’t say for sure what the perfect tablet OS looks like. It’s certainly not TabCo’s disaster of a UI. But I imagine that it would be more oriented toward connecting people to each other and their services than explicitly “running applications”.
How it connects
This is one of the big hardware design changes that I’d propose for a new tablet. What is the biggest pain about connecting your devices to the cloud? Right, it’s the price.
We can still have the internet, but let’s do it differently. Instead of relying on existing cell infrastructure as our primary means of getting mobile devices online, let’s build a mesh network of devices that connect to each other and relay information. If I want to send something to my friend across the country, the data routes from my tablet to my neighbor’s tablet, to a tablet nearby, and on and on until it reaches the intended recipient. Between me and my friend, there are only tablet nodes on the mesh network. No cell towers, no cell payments.
Sure, in the short term tablets could hook into local WiFi access points and relay their messages through land lines. But the idea is that we cut out the huge payments to cell companies that don’t really do anything more than what we could do with a couple of personally owned radios that are contained in every new tablet.
How it changes banking
I’m done with terrestrial banks, aren’t you? And paper money. And the US Dollar, really.
Wouldn’t it be something if you could store value in your tablet device? I’m not talking about tying your device to a bank account, which is certainly possible. I’m suggesting a different currency, born in the tablet network, backed by something other than the faith in the US government to pay its debts. Because, I mean, really?
Maybe Bitcoin isn’t the way to go, but a simple, open, secure way of exchanging value would be a financial boon. Think about it: Being your own bank or using someone else as a banking service, making loans and accepting interest. Sure, there’s piracy and money laundering to be wary of, but there are probably means by which you could augment something like Bitcoin to be more resilient to patently illegal uses.
When you combine a separate monetary system with independent network capability, you have something powerful. Something much more powerful than the next processor or the next touchscreen or something with a camera built-in which we’re soon going to be taking for granted.
These are the kinds of revolutionary steps I’m talking about. And it’s the same kind of thing going on, I suspect, as with the way cell phones seem to make very slow technical forward progress, always leaving out some simple to include yet vital feature that would make it the next Best Thing for a reason that is masked from consumers.
