Smartphone UI's - now with added Interwebbyness

2-3 years ago, operators and vendors saw multimedia use on phone to be a driver for additional ARPU drivers - thus a big push on the consumer to join the MMS "revolution" - advertising pushed picture messaging to the forefront for the consumer and mobile operators made taking pictures and sending them on easier. This is now changing - the growing trend within high-tier smartphones nowadays is to move the phone to be closely coupled with the Internet. Data is the new focus for operators, and trying to get consumers to use more data on their mobile will mean more money for operators. People who can afford smartphones - the high tier (read expensive) phones - are more likely to surf when on the move, because they have a higher disposable income/more likely to checkout Lolcats on the move/are single and don't have anyone to talk to. However, current use cases regarding consumer's surfing on their mobile tend to focus more on active web interaction - a user surfing using Safari/Opera/IE; a user checking their Weather.com mobile application, etc - and vendors are looking towards new ways in which consumers can use their data bundles in a passive sense.

Now, the way I'd see that working is having an innovative and interactive home screen on an open OS (like Windows Mobile) - a home screen that is based upon a fixed amount of widgets that show data that the user really needs. For example, if it was up to me I'd have the following on a home screen:

• Quick access to Phone Dialler
• Quick access to Call list/Missed calls/Speed dial
• Simple message centre allowing the user to consume SMS/MMS/Email
  
• Battery Meter
• Easy access to contacts
  
• Quick access to camera
• Weather/Stocks/Sport results display

It looks like I'm not the only one thinking of this - HTC and Sony have already gotten UI's out in the market that already achieve this:

I'd also have a secondary home screen which would include access to a larger back catalogue of widgets for key interweb services:

• Digg
• Reddit
• Stumbleupon
• Flickr
• Blogspot
• Ling
• Facebook
• Bebo
• Myspace
• Orkut
• Pandora
• LastFM
• LinkedIn
• Wikipedia
• YouTube
• MySpaceTV
• Del.icio.us
• Woot
• Shazzam
• Google
• Yahoo
• Remember The Milk
• Craigslist
• Ebay
• Twitter
• Google Maps

All of which could easily be encapsulated using an IE frame within Flashlite. All of this would drive ARPU for the Vendor, which would make any smartphone product that much easier to sell in. The Internet would be easy to access for the user and very discoverable, create and enhanced browsing experience, along with a rich messaging experience. I would also tie in the phone with the Vendors music shop - to allow users to download a music track on the go. If I was lucky enough for the phone to have wifi, I'd also chuck on an Internet radio app on their too.

All of this is coming soon enough, and all of it is to make consumers more reliant on their phone to be more proactive in their microtasking abilities - Create, Publish, Discuss®

Obviously, one would have to rely on the Vendor to actively market your new UI on your phone for it to really work - but you'd imagine that the prosumer segment would already know about this UI and would be clamouring at the bit to try it as the UI would be shiny, sparkly and generally very pretty.

Now, if a UI has neither of the above, or does the above to a certain extent then it's only fit for purpose for networks where data isn't a priority, or it will fail.

I may be stating the obvious here, and that the smart ones amongst my 3 readers may be sitting in their high backed chairs about to leave a comment using their iPhone to agree that I'm stating the obvious, but bear with me - there is a point here somewhere.