mobilePHONE

By Alan Kraemer

Todays mobile phones are much more than just a communication device

HOW DOES THIS PHONE SOUND?

How does this phone sound?, the opening line of many a phone call from my brother over the years. When I heard that, I knew he had some new whizz-bang cordless, and later, mobile phone that he just had to check out as soon as possible. The other day though I got an SMS from him that read How does this iPhone sound?, hmmm, things have changed. There was a time when you just talked on a telephone to someone at a remote location. It could be next door or halfway around the world, but WOW that was amazing! Also the phone was wired to the wall, stationary, while the TV was wireless. Now the opposite is true, the TV is wired, either to cable or a satellite dish, while the phone has sprung free and become mobile. Not only that, but those little devices that we carry around in our pockets are now entertainment centers (music players, TVs, game players, web surfers, etc.), communications hubs (email, text, MMS, the web), general purpose computers (calculators, organizers, spreadsheets, etc.), and, oh yes, mobile phones.

The phones we have today go way beyond Captain Kirks communicator from Star Trek, and that was 200 years in the future!
So how do you decide which of that vast array of mobile-do-everythingdevices available is right for you? Wellyou could just buy an iPhone. Apparently, with 17% market share (in Smartphones) and growing, many people are doing just that. They are cool, the touch interface is really slick, they store a reasonable amount of music, and now they sync directly with Microsoft Exchange Server so you can always be up to date on your email, contacts and calendar. On the other hand, you cant replace the battery, there is no voice or one button dialing so making a call is a ritual, they cant send or receive MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), the camera is only 2 mega-pixel (and cant record video) and there have been many reports of poor call quality and slow response from AT&Ts 3G network. But man is it cool, I think I want onebe right back.

OK, so now that we are over that, what should you consider when choosing your next mobile companion? First you need to decide whether you are looking for a personal phone or a business phone. For a business phone, for example, you may really want Active Sync to keep everything on your phone in lockstep with your companys Exchange Server, but for a personal phone, simple POP3 email, the standard protocol for directly accessing email from a server rather than syncing, may be just fine. Then you need to think about whats important to you and your lifestyle. Do you care about music playback, do you want/need to surf the web, do you travel a lot internationally? This guide will cover some of the key selection criteria so you can determine how they apply to your situation.

ACRONYM DECODER RING

The mobile phone industry is rife with acronyms. Here is a key to some of the most common.
CDMA EDGE EV-DO GPRS GSM HSPDA MMS SMS TDMA UMTS WCDMA Code Division Multiple Access Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution Evolution Data Optimized General Packet Radio Service Global System for Mobile High Speed Downlink Packet Access Multi-media Messaging Service Small Message Service Time Division Multiple Access Universal Mobile Telephone Service Wideband CDMA

FUNCTIONALITY

Carrier/Air Protocol
This choice relates to where you will use the phone.

For international use, there is really only one choice: GSM.

Virtually every country in the world, except Korea and Japan, has GSM based networks. Newer GSM phones also support HSDPA/UMTS networks which do exist in Korea and Japan, however you have to be very careful to ensure that the phone supports the radio bands used in those countries, which requires Tri Band HSDPA support. If not, you may find yourself landing at Japans Narita Airport with a useless phone (like I did once). Ask your carrier specifically about support for Korea and Japan if you plan on spending any time there. Even if you plan to roam only on GSM networks, you must ensure that the phone is Quad Band because the

bands used in the Americas do not coincide with those used in Europe and the rest of the world. While TriBand phones do have one overlapping band between the Americas and the rest of the world, it is possible that the band that overlaps is not in use in a particular region. For reference, the GSM bands in the Americas are 850 MHz and 1900Mhz, while the world bands are 900Mhz and 1800Mhz. This is not because of some spirit of American individuality; it is simply because the 900 and 1800 MHz bands had previously been allocated. In the US, the GSM service providers or carriers are AT&T and T-Mobile.

speakers that are near the phones. There really is no good solution to this problem, so if you need a GSM phone for international use, you will have to put up with it. However, the problem should be reduced once the transition to full 3G (see next topic) is complete since 3G uses WCDMA transmissions, which, as explained below, operate continuously and distribute energy in a way that minimizes interference. The other air protocol in use in the US is CDMA . CDMA is actually a more advanced system than GSM and it does not cause the buzz mentioned above. Verizon and Sprint provide CDMA service in the US, but their phones will not work internationally, unless you select one of the few models that support both CDMA and GSM. Verizon currently offers one from Motorola and two from RIM (Blackberry). As of this writing, Sprint does not offer a global phone. 2

GSM has one major disadvantage, however. Thats the unpleasant GSM Buzz.
GSM phones switch their transmitters on and off at 214Hz which causes very high energy pulses. These pulses can induce noise into audio systems or

FUNCTIONALITY continued
Data Transmission
This is simple: if you are buying a GSM phone, dont bother with one that does not support 3G/UMTS and, if you are buying a CDMA phone, forget it if it does not support EV-DO. Anything else is just not fast enough, unless you have a lot of time on your hands. On the GSM side, you may want to verify that the phone also supports HSDPA. That will let you go WAY fast as the data networks are built out in Europe and the US. Even on a 3G GSM phone, however, you may sometimes see a G or E designator rather than 3G. This indicates that the phone has fallen back to the earlier GPRS or EDGE data protocols. Both of these are slower, but then again nothing is perfect. It is pointless to talk about absolute data rates, since all kinds of numbers are bandied about by the handset providers and carriers, and transmission rate is really dependent upon the instantaneous signal quality in your area. So, even though UMTS and EV-DO are both capable of high transmission speeds, your mileage may vary.

Texting
Among some age groups and in many parts of the world, people almost never talk on their phones and, instead, prefer to text. SMS or Short Message Service evolved as a way for carriers to get revenue for the spare time on their digital networks and has recently become hugely popular. If you plan (or your kids plan) to do a lot of texting, make sure you get a flat rate data plan.

Another aspect of data transmission is cost. Make sure you are very clear on the terms of your carriers data plans.
The best bet is always a flat rate package. You will always use more data than you expect, especially if you are syncing over the air with something like Active Sync, and you dont want to get a big (sometimes very big) surprise in your bill. Also, be careful about international roaming as, generally, most flat rate plans do not cover roaming in other countries and the costs can mount up very quickly. Recently, however, some carriers have added international data add-ons for domestic flat rate plans.

Many parents have been shocked by the phone bill when their kids start sending and receiving more text per month than is contained in Websters Unabridged Dictionary!
Of course, the other key consideration is the keyboard. Some people (read kids) can text like a banshee on a standard telephone keypad. For the rest of us (read not kids) a QWERTY keyboard is a very good idea. Either way, you will develop very fast thumbs. The next step up from SMS is MMS or Multimedia Messaging Service. This is basically SMS with pictures or video and is supported by most phones these days. As mentioned before, a notable exception is the iPhone 3G, which does not support MMS. MMS is not too useful if the phone doesnt have a camera, for obvious reasons.

OPERATING SYSTEMS
Back in the days of mainframe computers, one of the most popular, the IBM 360, took an entire room, ran at 16.7Mhz (model 91) and typically had about 7.2 Mbytes of storage on washing machine size disc drives. The 2 year old, semi-outdated smartphone sitting on my desk as I write this has a processor running at 240Mhz, more than 100Mbytes of internal memory and 2Gbytes of removable storage on a MicroSD card the size of my fingernail. The whole thing, of course, fits in my pocket or the palm of my hand. Oh and its a bit less expensive than the old 360. These things are really computers with a telephone function and pretty powerful ones at that! As such, they all need operating systems but, unlike PCs with two major operating systems to contend with, there are at least six (with variants used on mobile phones). Each, as you would expect, has advantages and disadvantages which will briefly be discussed below. Embedded OS The most basic phones run on embedded operating systems. These are proprietary systems either developed by the handset manufacturer or based on a common third party core system like Nucleus from Mentor Graphics. While these phones may provide functions like music playback and rudimentary web browsing, they are the least flexible and are pretty much designed mainly to be just telephones (what a concept). If you are mainly interested in making phone calls, phones with embedded operating systems can be cheap, small, power efficient and reliable. The best selling Motorola RAZR is a classic example of this type of phone. Windows Mobile How many Microsoft employees does it take to change a light bulb? The answer? None, they just change the standard to darkness! Windows Mobile, however, is not darkness. It is really quite a good operating system for smartphones. Its advantages include familiarity, since it resembles Windows enough that anyone that uses a Windows based PC will feel at home, and, its ability to seamlessly 4

These things are really computers with a telephone function and pretty powerful ones at that!

OPERATING SYSTEMS continued

integrate with other Windows systems via USB, Bluetooth, or over the air can prove to be a major advantage. If you are selecting a business phone, Windows Mobile will keep your email, contacts, calendar and tasks in sync either with a direct connection to your PC or over the air. The synchronization becomes even easier if your business is running Exchange Server.

parallel with the acquisition, the Symbian Foundation was created to continue the propagation of the Symbian OS among multiple handset makers. The members of the Symbian Foundation are handset makers, Nokia, LG Electronics Inc., Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Samsung, and operators and wireless chipmakers AT&T, NTT DoCoMo, Texas Instruments, Vodafone Group and STMicroelectronics NV. A few years ago, Symbian licensed ActiveSync from Microsoft so any Symbian based phone can synchronize with Microsoft Exchange Server. Like Windows Mobile, the Symbian OS is available in either a touch screen or non-touch screen version. Symbian supports multimedia playback through third party applications like Packet Video. Microsoft Office document editing is available on Symbian through third party applications like those available from DataViz. The Symbian OS is used widely in Europe and other parts of the world, but is not as popular in the US market.

A few years ago, Symbian licensed ActiveSync from Microsoft so any Symbian based phone can synchronize with Microsoft Exchange Server.

Windows Mobile comes in either touch screen or non-touch screen versions, supports multimedia playback via the Windows Media Player and can run the mobile versions of Word, Excel and Power Point. Symbian The Symbian operating system was originally formed as a partnership between mobile handset companies to develop a smartphone OS. As with many partnerships, however, there was a dominant partner and that partner, Nokia, has recently acquired 100% ownership of Symbian. In

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Linux Linux is a bit complicated since it is an open platform and there are many different version provided by companies and organizations such as MonteVista, Access Linux Platform (ALP) and LiMo. In addition, Android, the new Google open mobile platform is based on the Linux kernel. At the moment, Linux based phones are a bit like embedded phones in that their features may vary significantly based on the handset manufacturers design. They are, however, smartphones, but, currently, ActiveSync is not supported on the Linux platform so, if you need to sync to an Exchange Server or to a PC (or Mac), a Linux based phone may not be the best choice. Android These days, anything that Google does is important. Therefore, Android is important and this open platform being propagated by Google is starting to see adoption by major handset makers. Much remains to be seen however, so try out an Android based phone at this point only if you are a tech freak and an early adopter. Blackberry The Blackberry OS is proprietary to RIM (Research in Motion) who basically popularized the business phone. As everyone knows, it came to be called Crackberry because the OS was so good that people became addicted to it. The Blackberry OS is the only smartphone OS that is proprietary to a single handset vendor and you cant find it on any other manufacturers handsets. As a side note, while the Blackberry OS is superb, RIM phones do not enjoy the same stellar reputation for voice quality. Natively, Blackberry phones synchronize to BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) and not directly to Microsoft Exchange Server. However, third party applications are now available that make this possible. Unfortunately many of these have monthly charges associated with them. Blackberry based phones have good multimedia support courtesy of Roxio (people who know something about media). All standard music and video formats are supported. iPhone When I started working on this guide, the iPhone 3G was about a 400 pound gorilla. Now it is about an 800 pound Gorilla and growing, and I havent been working on this that long! At this point, the iPhone 3G and its descendants appear to be poised to become the dominant smartphone platform on the planet earth. Apple licensed ActiveSync from Microsoft so the iPhone can sync email, contacts, and calendars with Exchange Server, but currently cannot sync tasks. Office document editing is available from a number of third parties. Multimedia playback goes without saying since the iPhone is essentially an iPod Touch with phone capabilities.

By opening the iPhone platform to application developers Apple may well have created the Windows of the mobile phone world.
In November 2008, the iPhone apps stores product offering passed the 10,000 point with a few hundred being added each week. What cant you do with an iPhone (I for one cant seem to type on it)?

ENTERTAINMENT FEATURES
Virtually every phone these days, except the most basic, has multimedia playback capability and almost all offer some gaming and web browsing capabilities. There are some things to consider, however, if you plan to use your mobile device for entertainment.

Screen Size and Type

Obviously, the bigger and brighter the better. If you are going to watch video or surf the web, you need to be able to see what you are looking at and not just under low ambient light conditions. It can be a real struggle to see some screens even in direct sunlight. If you can, take your prospective phone outside and see what you can or cant see. Screen size is matter of preference. Some people would rather have a smaller screen and a physical, traditionally layed out keyboard. Others prefer the largest screen possible and a soft keyboard (like the one iPhone provides). Slider type phones can offer both a large screen and a keyboard, but they can be a bit bulky. Regarding web surfing, many sites have now developed mobile versions that work very well on small screens. Examples are American Airlines, American Express, Bank of America, CNN, and many more, so if you are going to use the mobile web mainly for information and transactions, a smaller screen may be just fine.

Headphones In my humble opinion, the first thing you should check is the headphone jack. The only acceptable configuration is the standard 3.5mm mini jack. Anything else is beyond inconvenient, either tying you to the headphones that came with the phone (almost universally bad) or making you use easy-to-lose adaptors to attach standard headphones. The iPhone 3G definitely got it right! Next, check what kind of signal processing is available for headphone listening. Processes like WOW HD or CS Headphone from SRS Labs can significantly enhance the listening experience from a portable device. WOW HD takes the sound out of your head and significantly improves the perception of bass, while CS Headphone can render an entire surround sound experience through headphones including earbuds. This is great for watching videos, movies and sports. Voice Apparently, some people actually still talk on their mobile phones. When they do, they are frequently in noisy or very noise environments and even the most powerful earpiece/ speaker in a phone cant overcome the noise. Once again, signal processing comes to the rescue. SRS TruVoice processes the voice to optimize intelligibility given the available power in the phone and it automatically adjusts to ambient noise level, so there is always just the right amount of processing applied.

Sound The quality of the sound of a phone is critical for enjoyment of video, music and gaming.
A few considerations are outlined below. Speakers If you plan to use the built-in speaker or speakers, make sure to listen to the quality and check to see where the speaker is positioned. A speaker positioned on the back of the phone can make it impossible to hear in even slightly noisy situations. If the phone has two speakers, make sure they are worth it by listening for stereo separation. Audio signal processing like SRS 3D, TruBass, TruVoice and TruMedia from SRS Labs can significantly improve the native performance of the tiny speakers in mobile devices. Look for these features when you make your purchase.

Without Processing

With SRS TruMedia Processing

ENTERTAINMENT FEATURES continued

Media Acquisition
There are four ways to get media into a phone: 1) SIDE LOAD 2) DOWNLOAD 3) STREAMING 4) DIRECT BROADCAST Side loading uses a PC or other internet device to download the media which is then transferred to the mobile phone. iTunes is a good example of this. Downloading brings the media directly into the phone either via the cellular network or WiFi. Both side and down loading require local storage to hold the media. Streaming uses the cellular network or WiFi to transfer information in real time so, only a small buffer is needed in the phone. Finally, direct broadcast actually transmits video information to the phone over the air in digital format. Essentially, this is mobile digital TV. This capability is just now being built out and enabled in the United States, but it already exists and is hugely popular in Korea and Japan. In the US, mobile digital broadcast is based on a proprietary standard from Qualcomm called MediaFlo. However, the ATSC (Advanced Television

Systems Committee) is now involved and a single public standard should emerge based on this work.

One last way to get media into a phone is to create it yourself.

Most phones have cameras these days and the great thing about having a camera on a phone is that it is always with you. Cameras in phones range from simply awful to pretty good, but they are getting better and better with some of the best rivaling stand alone digital cameras. Look for zoom capability and low light sensitivity. Mega pixels are kind of a marketing thing, but try to get a camera with at least two for decent pictures. 8

CONNECTIVITY
Aside from the basic connection to the cellular network, todays mobile phones can have many other ways to communicate with the outside world. The most popular are discussed below. Bluetooth Almost all current phones have Bluetooth capability. This is the wireless connection protocol that enables people to walk around with those headsets that make them look like the Borg from Star Trek and it also enables wireless hands free devices in cars. GPS Whats cooler than having your phone communicate with satellites? We have come a long way from Sputnik. GPS or Global Positioning System lets your phone know, with great accuracy, where it is. With applications like Google Maps, precise turn-by-turn direction can be supported. GPS can also enable so called location based services. Because your phone knows its location, it can provide information on services available in the local area. It can also automatically inform people of your exact location in an emergency. USB 2.0 USB 2.0 enables a high speed, hardwired connection to and from external device like a PC, enabling synchronization and data transfer. A USB 2.0 connection is also the fastest and best way to transfer all those pictures you took with your phones camera to another device short of removing the storage card. WiFi Your phone can do everything with WiFi that your PC can such as surfing the web, downloading data and media, emailing and more.

Many people dont realize, however, that Bluetooth also comes in a stereo version for music listening that can un-tether you from those headphone cords.
(and avoid the problem on non-standard headphone jacks mentioned above). Bluetooth audio transmission is not perfect so, again, audio signal processing like WOW HD, CS Headphone and TruVoice from SRS Labs can significantly improve your experience with Bluetooth audio. Bluetooth in a phone can also be used to beam data, such as contact information, and pictures from device to device, and used to synchronize and transfer data and media from PCs.

For data transfer, WiFi is still generally faster than even the fastest cellular data networks.
In addition to these traditional functions, some carriers are now even offering services that allow you to seamlessly transfer to a VoIP (Voice Over IP) call when a WiFi hotspot is available. This is great for those who have issues with cellular coverage in their homes or offices.

BACKUP
We store a lot of critical data in mobile devices these days. What happens if the phone is lost, stolen or destroyed? Just the thought of losing all those contacts is horrifying. Upgrading to a new phone can also be a challenge; your contacts need to go with you. Fortunately things are getting better these days. If you choose a phone that can synchronize with a server, all of your information resides on that server and can be instantly restored to a new phone if the old one accidently drops in the toilet, is lost or stolen or if you are just upgrading.

The great thing is that ActiveSync has become sort of a defacto standard.
So, even if you switch from a Windows Mobile phone to an iPhone, for example, your information will transfer. If you dont have a server to sync to, ActiveSync can still sync and backup your data on a PC with either a hardwired or internet connection. For those that dont sync their phones, most carriers now offer an inexpensive service that will backup your contacts on their system daily. These contact databases can easily be transferred to other phones as required.

DO YOU KNOW
What do you do if your phone drops in water? Do not panic! And, do not attempt to turn it on as turning it on will almost certainly short circuit everything inside. Instead, immediately open the battery door and take out the battery (sorry, iPhone: you have no battery door!) and place the phone and the battery in a warm, dry place, preferably under the sun, for 48-hours. Then, reinsert the battery, close the door, and turn it on. 9 out of 10 times, the phone will be working just fine.

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LOCKED VS UNLOCKED

In the US, service providers (carriers) subsidize phones. So, you can imagine that they would not be too thrilled if you bought a shiny new handset that they paid for and then waltzed off to another provider.
To prevent this, the phones are locked to the carrier that you bought them from. Assuming you are happy with the carrier and are willing to sign up to a contract (usually two years), there is no problem with a locked phone, the initial settings are all configured correctly for both voice and data and you can still roam on other carriers overseas. For most people, this is the best and easiest choice. UNIDENTICAL TWINS: One of these phones is locked, the other is unlocked. Can you tell the difference?

If you really want flexibility and dont want to sign up for a contract, then you can get an unlocked phone for a lot more money (no subsidy). The downside of this, however, is that you will have to configure all the data and voice settings yourself, which is not for the faint hearted. Still you own the phone and you can do with it as you please. Some carriers offer unlocked phones at higher prices, so one way to go would be to buy the unlocked handset from your primary carrier. In that case, at least everything would be set correctly for initial use and you will not need to spend hours talking to semi-trained tech support personnel of the phone maker or the carrier (trust me, that could prove frustrating very quickly). Unlocked phones may also be prone to glitches when upgrading. As phone makers provide upgrades to their phones, they are intended to update specific phones for specific carriers. As a result, if an unlocked phone is upgraded running on a carrier that is not ready for the upgrade or does not allow the upgrade, the phone may simply stop working. In fact, the industry has a term for the above: Bricking (as in the phone turning into a brick!)

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WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

The phones we have today would have been unimaginable only a few years ago. Whats next? A few thoughts: Ultra Wide Band (UWB) will let us connect and download content and data at extremely high speeds over short range wireless connections. RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) will enable us to make purchases with our phones by simply holding them near a transceiver. Phone cameras will get better and better eventually replacing standalone digital cameras and phones will become the essential media storage and playback platforms. New connectivity methods will permit video beaming and projectors may even be built-in providing the capability to beam a PowerPoint presentation directly to a screen (3M already has a prototype) from a phone.

With fold up or virtual Bluetooth keyboards, it will become even more practical to email, text, and write documents on a phone. Going further, it will become possible to hook the phone up to a TV or external display and watch high quality content on a big screen. When it arrives, this connection will probably be wireless. In fact, with the growth in storage capacity on phones, you may very soon be able to store most of your media on them. And, one day, you may be able to walk into a room and the phone will automatically and wirelessly connect to any rendering device, like a flat panel TV or audio system, that exist there in the room. Then your phone becomes the remote control and streams the stored content in it directly to any of the playback devices in the vicinity. Likewise, when you take the same phone into your car, it will find the screens and audio capabilities there and connect to them for playback.

Ultimately, the phone may replace both what we think of today as the PC in most applications and also become the primary media playback deviceand we havent even started yet.

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CLOSING THE CONNECTION

In the end, choosing a mobile phone is a very personal decision. It must fit your personality, your taste, and your lifestyle. After all, we spend more time with these devices than just about anyone or anything else. I am not sure how we ever got along without them. They are also very complex and offer a huge range of features. One guide cant possibly cover all the variables that go into a decision, but hopefully the information here will be helpful.

Alan D. Kraemer has served as Chief Technology Officer of SRS Labs since January 2005 (and holds multiple US patents as well as numerous foreign patents related to audio processing). During his tenure at SRS Labs, he has also served as Executive Vice President, Technology and Business Development, Vice President of Engineering and Director of Engineering. Prior to joining SRS Labs in 1994, Mr. Kraemer served in a variety of executive and technology capacities with industry leaders such as Sierra Digital Productions, De LaRue Printrak, AST Research and Northrop Electronics. He currently holds 13 patents in the fields of audio technology and computer architecture.
SRS Labs, Inc. 2909 Daimler Street Santa Ana, California 92705 800-243-2733 www.srslabs.com 2009 SRS Labs, Inc. All rights reserved. SRS, CS Headphone, TruBass, TruVoice, TruMedia, WOW HD, VIP+ and the SRS logo are trademarks of SRS Labs, Inc. All over brand names mentioned are trademarks of their respective holders.

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