Cellphone Connectivity

Introduction

Cellphones usually provide connectivity options to connect through their surroundings like computer, network, other cell phones etc for data/services/synchronization in either direction. The main used are data cable, infrared and bluetooth.

Data Cable

Its the solution of the early ages to connect cellphone to a personal computer. There are two types i.e serial and Usb data cables. Serial data cables are difficult to interface until a correct driver/software is not installed. Usb is a better solution which provide autodetect feature. But still datacable is not a universal/generalized solution and varies with cell phone. This interface has only one major use uptill now and that is cellphone unlocking and upgrading firmware. These tasks could not be achieved by infrared or bluetooth because for these, the cellphone has to be in off state.

Infrared

Infrared is the most common connectivity option for cellphone-cellphone communication and cellphone-pc communication. Nowadays most average handsets have infrared feature in them. On the receving end the computer should be equipped with infrared adapter and required software or the receiving cellphone should be aware of the protocol of receiving data. For infrared, transmitter and receiver device should be in line without an obstacle. Range of infrared is even less than a meter and it can't be used for varied purposes.

Bluetooth

Bluetooth is the most advanced these days. Many high-end cellphones and PDAs are equipped with bluetooth. Even, SonyEricsson have place bluetooth in their average handsets. Bluetooth is based on radio waves so its range is around 30-100 feet and it can also cross the obstacles.

Innovations with Bluetooth

Bluetooth provides a lot of innovations for local area networks. For example, printers are equipped with bluetooth, so, you take a picture and send it to a nearby bluetooth printer. A matchfinder application that searches around its bluetooth devices and tries to match profiles of users if they've also installed that application. On match their devices will beep ! . In excellent combination of cellphones and game decks eg N-gage; bluetooth is the key technology. Similarly there are lot more to come.

Conclusion

Apart from having the option of infrared and bluetooth, devices should also match the protocols. SonyEricsson has done a lot of work in it and even they've developed a standard called Quick Share i.e you have data and you get all options to send it via infrared, bluetooth, email, MMs etc. Take Nokia, Samsung; even if both handsets support infrared, you can't send a picture from one cellphone to other. So, interfacing is important and standards need to be developed.