Posts Tagged ‘4G Mobile Hotspot’
How Are These New Fangled Two-Way Walkie Talkies Going to Effect My Small Business OR…Holy Cow Mr. Spacely, These New Smart Phones Belong on The Jetsons!
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
Yesterday at the International CTIA Wireless conference in Las Vegas, Sprint announced that they are releasing the first 4G-powered cell phone, the HTC EVO 4G, in the United States this Summer. 4G is the next generation of cell phones that all the major wireless carriers will be releasing in the 1-2 years and they are called 4G because they are supposed to be the next generation of phones able to transmit data 10 times as fast as the currently available 3G phones.
I know what you are thinking, “Big deal, sounds like another iPhone techy thing that won’t impact my business for a few years down the road.” Well, maybe…but maybe not. Up until now a lot of the really data intensive applications for cell phones have not been able to efficiently run on the existing cell phone networks so many people have only been able to use them while they are at a wi-fi hot spot or at home on their own wireless network. This 4G technology may very well change all of that. Here are a few game changing technologies and applications that these 4G phones are going to make possible in the next 3-4 months:
Video Cell Phone Calls – Not only is there an HD quality 8 mega-pixel camera on the back of the phone but there is also a 1.3 mega-pixel camera on the front of the phone so users can speak into the phone and view video while also transmitting a video of themselves to others. Video phone calls from home still haven’t really gone mainstream and video calls from current 3G phones isn’t really possibly because of data latency but this could very well bring video phone calling to the mainstream public. How would this change your business if consumers started expecting you to answer with a video phone in your store?
Google’s Goggles (Picture) Search – Google just introduced their new Google Goggles search with the new HTC EVO 4G smart phone. This new search technology for the Android operating system allows users to take pictures of objects and then the web browser on the phone automatically searches for information about the object in the picture. If you are drinking a bottle of wine and wonder what part of California the grapes are from…take a picture of the label and Google will automatically search for that information for you. This could be an extremely useful technology for small businesses to take advantage of while also driving additional traffic to their site when consumers search for their products using this new search technique.
4G Mobile Hot Spot – Another game changing technology that this new Sprint smart phone is bringing to market is the ability for up to 8 other devices to use the HTC EVO 4G phone as a wi-fi hot spot to connect to the Internet. In your car with your laptop and need to get online to check your email or the latest football scores? What would normally be impossible without a wireless modem or other device is now possible with your smart phone in your pocket!
Finally, as a follow-up to a post I made here a few months ago, I have finally decided which smart phone to purchase as my first step into this market…can you guess what it is going to be?
