In Depth: Mobile phones in 2011: what to expect

Without a doubt, the mobile phone is the ultimate consumer electronic device. Why? Because it's an electronic device that is consumed like no other.

Honestly, can you think of any other gadget that you will willingly change almost every year? Would you buy a new TV, games console or Blu-ray player every twelve months?

Yet with mobile phones, we simply must have the latest model, with the latest features, despite the fact that there's probably nothing whatsoever wrong with our current handset.

The upshot of our willingness to upgrade at the drop of a hat is that mobile phones seem to develop and evolve at an exponential rate. Whether it be hardware, software or network services, the mobile phone market is constantly pushing new boundaries. So, what can we expect to see in 2011?

Android Evolution

Android has gained a significant amount of ground during 2010. A combination of improved user interface, increased app support and great hardware has made Android a serious contender against the might of the iPhone. And although the Google Nexus One wasn't the success that many had predicted, the HTC Desire (essentially the same phone) was one of the best handsets of the year, if not the best.

With Android 2.3 Gingerbread just announced, and a new Google branded handset ready to hit the streets in time for Christmas, Android is set to start 2011 in a strong position.

Although the Google Nexus S will be the first phone to run Gingerbread, we should see it rolling out to other Android handsets in early 2011. So, anyone running an HTC Desire or Samsung Galaxy S will be waiting with baited breath for that OTA firmware upgrade.

Gingerbread brings quite a few useful changes, but many feel that these changes should have materialised in version 2.2 Froyo. Changes to the soft keyboard promise a far more accurate typing experience – an area where Android handsets have lagged behind the iPhone. There are also improvements to copy and paste, as well as simplified cursor navigation through text.

Gingerbread also brings integrated VoIP calling to Android thanks to native SIP support. While support for Near Field Communication (NFC) means that Android phones will be able to interact with NFC devices, taking us one step closer to your phone being your Oyster card when travelling on London Transport. Of course the NFC support is dependant on NFC hardware, so it's only applicable to new phones.

For a full rundown on Gingerbread's feature set, check out our in depth article Android 2.3: what you need to know.

But despite the fact that Gingerbread will be barely out the door in the New Year, we can expect Android 3.0 Honeycomb to break cover in early 2011. Although the big news with Honeycomb is its enhanced, native tablet support, we're expecting big things for smartphones too.

Nothing has been officially confirmed as far as specs go, but the rumours are that Honeycomb will be limited to high-end handsets that have enough grunt to run the OS. This brings Android into line with iOS, where new versions often leave older iPhones struggling to cope.

Of course what we consider to be a high-end handset today, could quickly become a mid-range handset in 2011, so Honeycomb could end up being more accessible than the early rumours suggest.

3G is like so over…

We've been making do with 3G technology for some time now, and although data rates have improved thanks to rollouts of ever faster HSDPA standards, it's surely about time for our ever more powerful smartphones to have a 4G network to connect to.

The latest standard to lay claim to the 4G crown is LTE Advanced or LTE 4dvanced if you go by its logo (see what they've done there?). LTE Advanced has moved to the front of the pack for a number of reasons, but primarily because the majority of major network operators have come out in support of the LTE standard.

With theoretical maximum download and upload speeds of 1gbps and 500mbps respectively, LTE Advanced doesn't so much beat HSDPA, it takes it outside and gives it a good kicking! In fact, even the fastest home broadband services couldn't hold a candle to those figures.

As always though, it's worth taking special note of that word "theoretical" and the fact that there are no LTE Advanced networks in existence, yet. In fact despite LTE Advanced being touted at 4G, vanilla LTE (non-Advanced) will be the interim standard, offering more conservative, but still very impressive theoretical download and upload speeds of 100mbps and 50mbps respectively.

To put this into perspective, LTE Advanced is scheduled to be release 10 of the LTE standard. The current release, version 8, supports a theoretical

300mbps download speed, which we're pretty certain no smartphone user would be disappointed with.

And then there's WiMAX – another standard that has often been described as 4G. WiMAX also offers greatly increased data speeds with the added advantage of a very wide coverage area.

Although WiMAX has received significant support from technology giants such as Intel, as well as a relatively extensive network rollout in the US through companies such as ClearWire, the fact that the major mobile phone operators have chosen LTE has made life difficult for WiMAX.

Of course the other half of the equation is handset hardware, and with rumours spreading of upcoming handsets supporting LTE, the battle for 4G may well be over very soon.

Apple iPhone 5

Despite the fact that we chose not to lead with the obvious in this article, there's no getting away from the fact that the iPhone 5 will be one of major mobile phone events of 2011, just as every other iPhone has been since the first generation unit launched.

The iPhone 4 represented a pretty major change over the iPhone 3GS, so most rumours are predicting that the iPhone 5 will be more of an evolution than a revolution. The most obvious issue to address will be the signal strength problem with the iPhone 4, so there's likely to be either a change in case design, or the way the internal components are positioned.

The ever present rumour of a smaller iPhone is still doing the rounds, but with the introduction of the high resolution Retina Display screen in the iPhone 4, it would be costly to recreate the pixel density in a smaller screen.

More interesting are the suggestions that the iPhone 5 will sport both NFC technology and support for LTE. The latter would make the iPhone 5 one of the first 4G phones on the block, although finding an LTE network to hook it up to might be a challenge.

For all the latest iPhone 5 rumours, check out our in depth article iPhone 5 rumours: what you need to know.

Windows Phone

Now that Windows Phone 7 has proved that Microsoft can make a mobile phone operating system that's actually user friendly, we can expect to see lots of movement in the Windows Phone space in 2011.

Inevitably there will be more handsets released, that will build on the strong launch units. Add to that the plethora of firmware updates that Microsoft is no doubt already working on, to keep improving Windows Phone 7 both in terms of features and usability.

Make no mistake, Microsoft knows that it's playing catch up in the mobile marketplace, but history has taught us never to write off the big M.

WebOS phones

It's also worth keeping an eye on HP. The company has already confirmed that it will be launching a webOS powered tablet device in early 2011, dubbed the PalmPad, but it's fairly safe to assume that we'll be seeing some new webOS phones as well.

HP had previously used Windows Mobile to drive its smartphones, but after paying over a billion Dollars to buy Palm, we're going to go out on a limb and assume that the majority of HP mobile devices will be sporting webOS from now on.

Even though the Palm Pre 2 was a little anticlimactic, we still think that HP could pull a pretty compelling smartphone out of the hat in 2011.

A Nokia comeback?

And what of Nokia? The once dominant player in the mobile phone market has struggled to keep up with the competition. The main difficulty for Nokia has been its insistence on using Symbian to drive its hardware, while the likes of Android and iOS stole the ball. Hell, even Windows Mobile has leapfrogged Symbian on pretty much every relevant level.

However, despite being slightly hamstrung by its OS, Nokia has still managed to produce some pretty good handsets recently. The range topping N8 is a surprisingly good bit of kit, and the latest Symbian^3 OS is a huge improvement over previous versions.

However, Symbian^3 is quirky at best, and still way behind the competition when it comes to intuitive ease of use. But as with Microsoft, we're wary of ever writing Nokia off, so we're expecting some updates to Symbian^3 in 2011, coupled with new hardware to exploit the OS to its full potential.

Whether Nokia will come up with a true competitor to the iPhone or a high-end Android handset remains to be seen, but deep down, we kind of hope it does.

With the Consumer Electronics Show in January and Mobile World Congress in February, we're expecting some big announcements in the next couple of months. We'll be attending both shows, and covering all the big launches in the mobile arena.