FOM Misses Point

FOM or Future of Mobile as it is known is currently going on in that hell hole known as London.

The great and the good of the UK Web 2.0/Mobile/whatever are there.

I've been following bits of it via Twitter. It's the poor mans way to attend an event without having actually to be there or pay the high fees (which are in place to deter plebs like me).

Anyway the point is I see events like this irrelevant. There is no point discussing bringing the web to the phone, or location based services, or mobile app development. Why?

Well there is one thing that needs solving pretty dam fast or this whole thing will hit a brick wall and go no further.

What is that then? The battery life of the phone itself. The phone is now a convergent device. It is a phone (naturally), GPS, camera, video camera, diary, mp3 player, movie player, it has Wifi, Bluetooth. You can surf the net, play games, twitter, access Facebook and loads more. If you can get it as an app and install it, you can do it.

But all this eats up the battery like there is no tomorrow. Long gone are the days of having to only charge a phone once a week, with the new "smart phones". If you use a lot of the functionality of these phones, like the mp3, or watch a tv program, surf the net. In no time you are out of power and searching for some way to charge your phone again.

I don't think that the public will put up with this for long. Then what? Will the market collapse? I don't know. But I do know that the FOM should be looking at what happens if the battery life doesn't improve.