2. Myself
• Professional Experience
– Program Manager, Innovation & Research Center, HTC Taipei
– Graduate Researcher, Intel, USA
– Staff Engineer, Sun Microsystem, USA
• Education
– Ph.D., Computer Engineering, Boston University
– M.S., Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California
3. Agenda
• How smartphones have changed our life
• Smartphone history
• Hardware overview
• Software overview
• Future trend
4. How smartphones change our world
• Let’s start with a date
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXzqQJcdr4g
• Before & After……
5. How smartphones have changed our life
Who remembered more than three numbers?
Who remembered your parents/brother number?
17. 1st generation: cell phone
• Period: From 1980s to 2000
• Analog based mobile network
• No data communication, only SMS
• Heavy and bulky handset
• Targeted only for the business and for
• special segment
19. 2nd generation: feature phone
• Period: From ~2000 to 2007
• Mobile phone for the mass people
• Relatively slow data connection/ Internet usage by phone
• Various kinds of handsets
• Handset development environment is relatively closed
21. 3rd generation: smartphone
• Period: ~2007 ~Now
• Higher speed data network
• Many new entrants to mobile handset industry, such as Google and Apple
• Industry structure revolution
• Additional features: Apple Pay, Google Wallet
22. Moore’s law to driver IC technology
• In 1965, Gordon Moore, In 1965, Intel co-
founder, observed that the transistor
density doubles every 18 months.
• Will it still be valid?
• If not, what happened?
• What component doesn’t follow?
Source: http://www.intel.com
27. iPhone6 material cost (estimated)
http://www.techinsights.com/teardown.com/apple-iphone-6/
28. Application processor
• ARM
– RISC architecture
– Power efficient
– Design solution provider
• Main player
– Qualcomm(高通)
– MTK (聯發科)
– Spectrum (展訊)
– Samsung
• Intel
– CISC
– It’s too late….
http://technews.tw/2013/07/08/qualcomm-lost-marketshare-in-china
29. Connectivity --- GPS
• Global Positioning System (GPS)
– 24 satellites
• Other GPS systems
– GLONASS from Russia
– Beidou from China
– Galileo from EU
• 3G/Wi-Fi/Map to aid GPS (AGPS)
• ~10 meter accuracy
• Power hungry
30. Location-based service with GPS, Wi-Fi & BT
• Geo-fencing
• Indoor Positioning
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUIqfjpInxY
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qELko9yto8A
• Traffic: crowd sourcing
• Push advertisement to you
32. OLED vs. LCD
• Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED)
• LCD (Liquid Crystal Display)
• Advantages
– Brighter, clearer picture
– More efficient viewing angle
– Thinner, lighter in weight
– Low powered
– Can be printed on various surfaces (flexible)
• Dis-advantage
– Expensive
– Image sticking
– Color saturation (too much)
33. Retina display
• Brand names used by Apple for screens that have a higher pixel density than their
previous models
• Refer to pixel density or pixel per inch (PPI)
• PPI
– Retina HD display (401 PPI, iPhone 6 plus)
– Retina display (326 PPI, iPhone 6/iPhone 5)
• Display resolution
– 4K2K (3840 x 2160)
– FHD (1920 x 1080)
– HD (1280 x 720)
– WVGA (800 x 480)
34. Touch screen
• An electronic visual display that locates the
coordinates of a users touch within display
area
• Works independently of what is being
displayed on screen
• Touch technology
• Resistive
• Capacitive
35. Resistive touch screens
• Voltage in circuit changes based on position
• Controller determines location based on voltages
• Any material can trigger sensors
Source: http://www.icyte.com/system/snapshots/fs1/0/c/d/7/0cd75b21b4fc07d1d6161c891748efc64b01cca0/index.html
37. Resistive vs. Capacitive
• Resistive
– Cost & Power effective
– Only single touch
– Activated by any object
– Only 75% light transmission
• Capacitive (main stream)
– Allow multiple touch
– Very accurate
– Good optical quality
– Triggered only by bare finger or active stylus
39. Finger-Print
• Product overview
– Authentec acquired by Apple on July, 2012.
– Swipe and on-touch solutions
– Under-glass implementation
– ITO (transparent) solution
• Benefit/Application
– Identity unlock (including multi-user login)
– Quick app launch/unlock
– Payment security
40. More on sensor technology
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvYR549kZs0
41. Smartphone OS
• Google Android – Open source mobile OS developed by the Open Handset
Alliance led by Google. Based on Linux 2.6 kernel (written in Linux, C/C++, Java)
• Apple iOS – Apple’s proprietary mobile OS, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad. Derived
from OS X, very UNIX like (written in Object-C).
• Microsoft Windows Phone (written in C/C++)
• Blackberry OS – RIM (Research in Motion), proprietary OS
• Symbian – acquired by Nokia 2008
• Tizen: Samsung
42. Major players (Android vs. iOS)
Source: http://9to5google.com/2014/04/30/android-grows-to-almost-60-us-smartphone-marketshare-in-q1-as-ios-drops/
45. TIOBE Index for October 2014
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html
46. TIOBE Index for October 2014 (Cont.)
The TIOBE Programming Community index is an indicator of the popularity of programming languages. The index is updated once a month. The ratings
are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors. Popular search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo!,
Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube and Baidu are used to calculate the ratings. It is important to note that the TIOBE index is not about
the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html
48. Future
• Small, Fast, and Long
• Big Data (cloud computing)
• Internet of Thing (IoT)
– Wearable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shirth1OjRE
– Fitness
– Healthcare