There’s this jockeying contest right now for who can be the best Smartphone out there and I don’t really care; I don’t. They’re advertising these Smartphones like they’re the best thing since sliced bread, but it’s not swaying me to change or do any thing special right now.

It’s not the feature set of the phone, what it can do or so much the coverage it can offer- as a customer, it’s the transference of the data/information.

And from that your asking, what am I talking about?

I’ve several friends that have Smartphones; iPhone, blackberry’s, etc.

These devices have infiltrated their lives and established themselves as a daily life requirement. I mean, there’s no need to remember anything anymore; these devices house everything from contacts, birthdays, calendars, to do lists and even more personal information. It’s amazing how dependant people have become to have these devices provide answers and the trust that are placed on them to keep all this safe.

So my issue is, once you’ve all your precious moments and data in these devices, what happens when you switch, when your phone dies or you get a new phone?

I know for some of the basic stuff you can just switch the SIM card, but what about everything else; what about the 90 applications you bought and used and put data in to… are those transferable? If you move to another phone will the same application be available on that phone? That’s my issue.

This race that’s going on right now is what I can’t stand. You might as well be back in the early 80’s with the VIC20, C64, Coleco Adam and TRS-80 [coco]; it’s the race to define a standard. And the result of this race was PC [basically], but what it really did is remove variables essentially. It narrowed the playing field. Now you only have PC’s, MAC and LINUX [basically].. AND they still don’t work together. They are not interoperable [excluding Linux and WINE]. You can’t take this and put it over there and it work. There’s not a standard Operating System and that’s a problem.

I guess all I’m saying is, if I take the time to put information in to a device or software package, it should be exportable, transferable and consistent. Do I think this is going to happen? No- that’s a Star Trek world and there’s no money in that business model.

While some of you might say the ‘cloud’ will take care of that; I’m not real comfortable with that ‘fog bank’ where everything is just supposed to work. It’s a great idea, but your actually relying on people like Microsoft to manage your data [or lose it]. But this is also exposing all your data, and would you trust all your business secrets to Google DOCS? or an online office package?

I don’t think so.

While there may be programs to sync up and ways to get around this; incurring the nightmare of having to re-enter 250-500 contacts back in to my phone, or having to re-establish reminders/events in a new calendar is just not something I’m going to treat lightly.

How have you dealt with this and what do you think?

Thanks,
LHenryJr.
www.lehsys.com

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