Is Android the Future of Feature Phones?
Feature phones are about to be reborn.
The $270 Kyocera Dura XE for AT&T looks and works just like flip phones have done for 15 years or so. It flips open, has relatively fixed functions, and no app store. But under the hood there's a strange amount of power for an easy-to-use flip phone: a Snapdragon 210 processor, 1GB of RAM...and Android.
The Android feature phone movement isn't new, but now might be its time. The strategy has been used to implement push-to-talk before in 2011's Motorola i886 (right), and to run music apps on 2012's ZTE Chorus. More recently, Sonim built a high-end corporate Android feature phone in the XP5. But a big wave may come soon because Android-compatible chipsets are much cheaper than they used to be, and the wireless carriers are demanding a truly non-feature phone-compatible feature: VoLTE.
Voice over LTE is huge for the U.S. wireless carriers. LTE is much more efficient than older cellular technologies, and switching customers to VoLTE lets carriers shift their spectrum away from older technologies and accommodate more customers. VoLTE, which can include "high-definition" voice and rich calling services such as IM and video calling, will eventually replace standard voice calling on all four major networks, executives have said at various times.
And VoLTE is definitely the future. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon have all launched VoLTE, and Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure says his carrier intends to do so as well.
Kyocera says that for the DuraXE, AT&T wanted its "enhanced push-to-talk" capability and voice-over-LTE, and those aren't available on the older feature phone operating systems. I've been unable to find any feature phones that support VoLTE, even globally.
Kyocera isn't the only company working on this. I've heard from several other manufacturers, who want to remain unnamed, that they're working on Android-based feature phones.
Feature Phones Have a Future
The CTIA, a wireless trade organization, estimates that about 22 percent of the 355 million total "connections" in the U.S. are feature or messaging phones—that's 78 million devices. That number jibes with what I've heard informally from Verizon, where various people have told me 20-30 million dumbphones remain on their network.
The CTIA, a wireless trade organization, estimates that about 22 percent of the 355 million total "connections" in the U.S. are feature or messaging phones—that's 78 million devices. That number jibes with what I've heard informally from Verizon, where various people have told me 20-30 million dumbphones remain on their network.
Ian Chapman-Banks, the CEO of Japanese manufacturer Freetel, sees an ongoing market for flip phones. His solution to consumers demanding feature phone form factors, for now, is the Musashi (left), a powerful dual-flip Android phone with a $249 list price.
"We make feature phones; even in Japan, they buy feature phones ... if you reach a certain age, you don't want to change, and why should you?"
Kyocera's protected by the Dura XE's corporate focus, which lets it sell its rugged feature phone for $270 - far more than, say, the $20 Blu is charging for its Tank II phone. Mediatek supplies many of the chipsets for those existing feature phones, and company president C.J. Hsieh says it's still tough to supply Android-compatible hardware, which gets down to the prices most people expect from feature phones.
"It's still not easy to move [feature phone customers] to the Android platform. They don't like it; it's too complicated, and the cost is a little big because of the footprint of the Android platform," he said.
There may be a way to slim down Android, Mediatek's general manager Finbarr Moynihan points out: get rid of the Google services, which add a lot of weight to the package.
"There are very different cost structures for software and memory. Closing that gap isn't so easy because it's not just Android, it's Android plus GMS," he said.
Moynihan and Hsieh also point out that there's still a very large market for super-inexpensive, 2G basic phones in the developing world, even if U.S. and Japanese carriers are starting to push hard to get away from 2G devices.
Can Apps Fit In?The main danger here is a missed opportunity.
While the manufacturers I've spoken to are working with Google to get some sort of stamp of approval for their feature phones, I haven't heard about any sort of consortium or coordination to allow for consistent interfaces or app compatibility across manufacturers' devices.
There's precedent for that, too. Back in 2008, a bunch of manufacturers tried to create a Linux-based middleware platform for semi-smartphones called LiMo (right), which ended up being folded into the Tizen OS. Of course, LiMo and Tizen both failed as standards (Tizen ended up becoming aSamsung-only project), which doesn't speak well for mobile OS standards formed by consortia. Maybe there are just too many cooks in the kitchen that way.
Some sort of consistency in the platform would allow for third-party developers to create apps and games for these budding feature phone platforms. Don't necessarily think of Candy Crush here; think of corporate GPS, asset tracking, line-of-business, and fleet-tracking apps for business feature phones, for instance. The need for those kinds of apps has been driving longtime rugged feature phone maker Sonim towards smartphones.
Over the holidays, I had a long chat with my in-laws about how they want to upgrade their Verizon flip phones, but don't have a lot of available options. (They need world phones, and Verizon has only two world feature phones out right now.) From what I'm hearing, they—and the millions of other feature phone users who may need new phones, but want quality phones that aren't big touchscreen slabs—may only have a year or so to wait.A common platform would also make the phones cheaper, more reliable, and quicker to come to market, as they'd be able to run common code for "apps" like VoLTE, push-to-talk, and carriers' account management apps.
We'll find out more at Mobile World Congress, the big mobile industry trade show starting on Feb. 22.
