I read an article recently where the author declared the latest series of smart phones to be the first of a new category. He called them App Phones. I tend to agree that the iPhones and Android phones and, to some extent, the Windows phones have evolved to the point that they are certainly more than phones. In fact, I'd use the term Smart Devices because calling them phones is too limiting. In fact, a gentleman told me the other day that he loves everything about his iPhone except making calls on it, which he rarely does. A phone manufacturers trying to figure out how to get the jump on his competition should pay close attention to a statement like that.

These are just the first of this next evolution. Today's Smart Phones are the Model Ts or sputniks, or homo erectus of what will become the Smart Devices. Take for instance the latest catch phrase, Augmented Reality. This is where we get to see additional information overlayed on a real scene, kind of like the way Arnold Schwarzenegger saw things in The Terminator. The first real world use I heard about was decades ago at Boeing. Their wiring technicians wore glasses that overlaid the schematic diagram of the plane's wiring so they could see where they were supposed to be running the wires.


I can imagine how this would help my computer network support technicians as they go about doing their jobs in the offices of my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers. The overlay could show them how the screen is supposed to look when they're done, or walk them thru the steps to get software properly configured.