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| THE STAT 26Percentage of wireless customers who use their cell phones to take picturesMore Vitals
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FEBRUARY 15, 2002 SPECIAL REPORT: CELL PHONES AT THE CROSSROADS Here Come the Souped-Up Cell Phones A new generation of gizmos will serve as PDAs, digital cameras, credit cards, even heart monitors Just what army the British agent is battling in this, the 20th film in the Bond series, is being kept as firmly under wraps as an MI6 communiqué. What is clear is how inspirational the location is for Eleksen's designers. After all, no one has better high-tech gizmos than 007. And right next door, the company is trying to revolutionize the world's most popular electronic gadget: the cell phone. Eleksen creates "intelligent fabrics" that can electronically sense a finger's touch and recognize the amount of pressure applied to it. There are no wires or circuits. In fact, the material feels like any other: You can fold it, scrunch it, or shove it into your pocket. Eleksen's first product, which will go on sale this spring, is a fabric keyboard that can be attached to a handheld computer, then folded up or wrapped around it as a cover. SEEDS OF CHANGE. And that's just the beginning, says Fok. He hopes that Eleksen's fabric will herald a new generation of lightweight cell phones that can be controlled with a squeeze of the hand or the glide of a finger, rather than via a series of tiny plastic buttons. Fok isn't the only one dreaming big. Product designers and handset makers around the globe are working furiously to develop new, better ways for consumers to use cell phones. At Nokia's Los Angeles lab, product engineers are working to develop a phone that will slot into your car's dashboard and automatically set your preferred radio stations, adjust the temperature, position the driver's seat, and display the best route to your destination. In New York, fashion technologist Victor Chu wants to develop a biodegradable casing for prepaid phones that contains flower seeds and can be planted once the phone runs out of credit. In San Francisco, Dennis Boyle, senior design engineer at design company IDEO, is turning to Star Wars for inspiration. He thinks the best way to surf the Internet from a cell phone is to develop a projector to cast and enlarge images on a portable screen. (Think Princess Leia's holographic plea for help to Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi.) ALL IN ONE. While each designer is following his own vision, nearly everyone agrees that future cell phones will be used for more than just voice communication. Instead, designers say, they'll manage our increasingly busy lives. Your phone will hold the keys to your bank account, and even remotely lock or unlock the door of your home. Phones will also behave like personal secretaries. So, if you're in a meeting, you'll be able to program it to forward only calls from your boss, others being directed to voice mail. Your phone may also one day respond to calls on your behalf with voice or text responses such as "running late," "on my way," or "call me later." The first iterations are just about here. On Feb. 10, Handspring launched its new Treo Communicator, which aims to replace the myriad of devices -- pagers, BlackBerries, phones -- that the best-connected people carry. The Treo looks like a regular handheld, but it's actually a combination phone/digital organizer that lets users send e-mail, text messages, and surf the Web -- all from a device that weighs just 5.4 ounces. Powered by a lithium-ion battery, the Treo yields 2.5 hours of talk time and 60 hours of standby time -- about the same as a traditional cell phone, according to Handspring. "For years, people have been saying, 'I want less equipment on me,'" says IDEO's Boyle, who helped develop the Treo. "This is a good first step." SHOE PHONE. If they evolve as the tech seers believe, cell phones of the future will do much more than alleviate the need to carry multiple digital devices. Some will specialize in taking and sending digital photos. Others will cater to businesspeople who need to create, edit, and share documents. Still others will be designed for athletes and feature technologies like built-in heart monitor. "Cell phones will ultimately be marketed like sneakers," says fashion technologist Chu, who is also a professor at New York's Parsons School of Design. "There will be one that's right for everybody." Nokia, the world's leading phone maker, is already heading down this road with its "segmentation" strategy, which it launched back in 1997. Today, the company has eight lines of phones, each of which targets a different constituency. The popular "Expression" series focuses on teenagers and includes games and easy text messaging. There's also the "Communicator" series, which, like the Treo, combines a handheld computer and mobile phone; a "Fashion" series, for those who crave style over substance; and the "Imaging" line, for the amateur photographer. Nokia spokesman Keith Nowak says basic phones now make up less than half of Nokia's sales. He predicts that as the capabilities of wireless networks expand, the number of traditional phones will continue to shrink in proportion to new specialized lines. MY CREDIT CARD IS RINGING. Challenges still lie ahead. For one, today's batteries won't be able to power an unlimited number of new features without compromising the size or weight of devices. Security, too, must be improved. Today, most phones allow people to set a PIN (personal identification number) to protect personal information. But IDEO's Boyle says the next generation of phones will go one step further: They'll be able to recognize their owner through the use of biometric identifiers, like a fingerprint or voiceprint. "The more data you have in a phone -- your PIN, your bank information, your contacts -- the more worried you become about losing it," says Boyle. "Once security is improved, the phone can become a substitute for your cash, credit card, and keys." That would be the ideal phone, designers say -- although it wouldn't really be just a phone anymore. It would be whatever you needed it to be -- a phone, a camera, a portable PC, a remote control. And that should appeal to the James Bond in all of us.  By Jane Black Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. 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