On the Future of Mobile Phones as the Heart of Community-Built Databases - Community-Built Databases: Research and Development - page 267

Fig. 11.1 Components of an iPhone 4 showing the hardware complexity of actual mobile phones.
Image provided by iFixit.com

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industry due the necessity to develop different technologies concerning mobile
phone deployment. Currently, manufacturers such as Intel are investing in the
creation of a low-consumption platform to offer an alternative to ARM processors.
The mobile phone industry still needs a generic platform, as occurred with the PC
industry, with low-battery consumption and other improved features. As there is
still no standardized platform, deploying software for mobile devices requires high
investments.
These are some of the common hardware features available on the modern smart
phones:

l High processing power, between 800 MHz 1 GHz
l High connectivity through: bluetooth, WiFi (802.11a/b/g/n), infrared, etc.
l Broadband connectivity: EDGE, CDMA2000, UMTS, etc.
l Camera sensors similar to normal cameras, offering between 3.2 and 12 Mpixels
l GPS and A-GPS in combination with geo-location using Internet databases
l Tilt sensors (accelerometer, brightness, and proximity)
l Digital compass
l Radio transmitter/receiver

These hardware capabilities have opened a new world of possibilities for the
software industry. Hence, software manufactures can offer software integrated with
continuous connectivity, data sensors, and geo-location. These features have been
integrated very rapidly into social networks due to the ease of transmission of
multimedia content (photos, videos, and audio), manage geo-positioning (where the
user is), and bilateral communication as in normal computers (instant messaging).