Gadgetory

hello and welcome I'm Brian Cooley in search of the next big thing by the end of this year 2014 it's estimated that some 1.7 billion people will be using a smartphone pretty impressive number except in a world of 7 billion people and rapidly counting it's still a smallish minority the estimation now is that the next billion users will come on board and start using a smartphone because of one device feature in particular cheap this compact so large 4.5 inch screen Firefox OS phone a 2 megapixel camera it's curved white body doesn't look to you but get directions for you search the web coming very soon this could be the perfect introduction today's typical five to eight hundred dollar premium smartphone no matter where you hide the cost of it is a non-starter for hundreds of millions of people who are either in secondary economies or who are personally right now in a secondary economy they are sort of off the grid in a world that has moved and mass from personal computers to mobile devices for so much of their computing connectivity and social behavior CNET's editors came away from the 2014 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona convinced that just about every player in the mobile game has made low-cost a high priority despite its low price the Moto G feel well built and like the Moto X features a curved back that's comfortable to hold now if you used to high-flying cutting-edge smartphones then this thing could be a bit of a shock to the system because it's absolutely tiny and it's very basic but the upside there is it it's extremely cheap nokia says it's going on tell immediately around the world but if you're low budget phone aimed at emerging markets now wha we said before that wife stands for year and that mixed with Firefox OS means that you're looking at an entry-level device here ultimately then the question is does this tweaked version of Android really have enough apps to be tempting you can pick this phone up to Vodafone but in mere 50 pounds on pay as you go the device is currently available for 4999 without a carrier agreement okay several trends i hope you spotted their first of all lower spec handsets and i mean lower spec not lame one camera instead of two perhaps fewer megapixels two core processor instead of four or eight maybe a little less storage a screen you were fine with a year ago and lots of plastic everywhere but none of that breaks the key function and premise of a smartphone which is your digital life everywhere next is the lower-cost platform focus now android is already basically free to handset makers though they will pay a fee if they want to build in pre-installed certain google services microsoft just made windows phone free to makers of devices below the 9 inch screen size that covers all phones and phablets the mozilla foundation is showing a reference design for a $25 firefox based smartphone now yes the screen is fairly small kind of crummy resolution just two gigabytes of storage and a low-powered processor but if you're coming off a dumb phone with a t9 right now those are details finally Samsung keeps dancing around this Tizen OS which is based on linux mobile the idea here is to go straight to the carriers and say look we can get together and make a phone that is pretty well function but keeping Apple and Google out of the mix giving you carry or more flexibility and I can assure you those carriers will use that flexibility to go downmarket to capture new users then there's Laura cough service this is big because that is the biggest expense you have as a smartphone owner over time of course that Firefox OS phone only runs at two and a half g network speeds which is very slow by develop standards but honestly they've had all the costs driven out of that kind of network and communications technology which helps to make the phone very cheap and let's be honest out there in the real world on your fancy 3g or 4g phone how often is it really running above two and a half g speeds there's a big trend toward bundling these family plans framley plans multi-device data bucket plans all of them tend to make more efficient the purchase of data where most of your smartphone activity takes place and then there's the monthly no contract revolution even in a rich market like the u.s. we're at nearly a third of all phone users are now on a no-contract month-to-month plan that's remarkable and a lot of it is about cost savings as well as choice and flexibility finally there's a big push by carriers in many markets to use spectrum differently in this could lower costs as well moving a lot of the traffic off expensive difficult hard to provision cellular towers on to more Wi-Fi hotspots that are dedicated to carrying mobile traffic not just portable traffic in the US for example the FCC is taking a controversial opinion that it's time to redeploy some broadcast spectrum to those kind of purposes like so many technology revolutions the smartphone era began with an emphasis on a flight toward quality performance an obsession with the gear and what it could do followed by a very predictable second phase another big lobe of users who are focused on convenience and cost