The Mobile Technology That Will Change Everything

Earlier this month America lost one of its most important innovators. Steve Jobs passed away after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. In an all-too-short 56 years of life, Jobs and the iconic company he co-founded revolutionized personal computing, mobile computing, music and more. From a now famous garage, he helped build the world’s most influential technology company and changed the world.

He will be missed.

Who knows what Jobs could have accomplished with another 20 years of healthy, productive life? I only wish some of the breakthrough cancer therapies in development could be brought to market more quickly…

Unlike entrepreneurs in the relatively unregulated personal electronics industry, innovators in biotechnology are constantly impeded by myriads of costly regulations.

The late Jobs’ Apple Inc. introduced the latest iteration of its wildly successful smartphone, the iPhone, preceding his passing. The new iPhone 4S features an upgraded ARM-based processor; a new version of the iOS operating system; a higher-quality camera; and new voice recognition features built into Siri, a personal assistant software package.

The new smartphone is able to record video at a full 1080p of resolution, and integration of Apple’s new cloud computing solution, iCloud, allows easy offline storage and access. Moreover, the phone will integrate both CDMA and GSM wireless, providing users with more flexibility when they are traveling around the world. The new iPhone is a world phone.

For many observers hoping for the iPhone 5, the 4S was somewhat underwhelming. Many of the features, such as an 8-megapixel camera, a more powerful processor, cloud storage and a voice-recognizing virtual assistant, are already available in existing Android products.

The 4S, therefore, is more of a mild upgrade of Apple’s existing product than a quantum leap. The iPhone 5 is still in the works and is expected sometime next year, but Apple needed a new product to introduce to existing users whose wireless contracts are due for renewal, and who might feel the temptation to switch to a different platform.

In the meantime, Samsung is working on next-generation smartphones, as well. One concept, the Galaxy Skin, can twist, flex and bend:

What is Samsung’s secret? Flexible active matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) technology supplied by none other than Universal Display Corporation.

New OLED technology allows for flexible, beautiful, nearly indestructible mobile screens. The use of graphene sheets — the discovery of which resulted in the awarding of a Nobel Prize last year — allows the touch-sensitive layers of the phone to be flexible as well. When the technology advances sufficiently, you may be able to carry an entire foldable tablet computer in your pocket.

The phone features an 8-megapixel camera and a 1.2 gigahertz processor. Although the processor type isn’t specified, some of latest high-end Samsung “super smartphones” have been running Nvidia Tegra processors. Samsung is reported to begin offering the phone in the second quarter of next year.

I hope it makes a big splash… it would mean a world of profits for these small chip companies.