TABLE OF CONTENTS This chapter explores 4G terminals from the technology and application viewpoints, in an attempt to identify possible trends, promising technical solutions, and challenges for designers of future portable communications equipment. The critical success factors for future 4G terminals are service convergence, user-centric interface, and portable intelligence, as shown in Figure 6.1. Service convergence is important not only in the sense of a terminal's ability to support multiples services, some of then concurrently, but also from the standpoint that many services from different providers will have to be compatible with a large variety of terminals with different capabilities. We already experience the convergence of various multimedia and interactive services, such as mobile Internet services, multimedia messaging services, and digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB). Concrete examples include: sending short messaging services (SMS) to broadcasters while watching TV on a mobile terminal; voting or any other user interaction on the move during a broadcasted program; and interactive Internet shopping for an object appearing in a MPEG4 movie. As convergence of services and supporting technologies becomes more and more important, the seamless connectivity among these services and technologies becomes crucial. Moreover, as mobile terminals become more complex, it is expected that convenient features aimed at enhancing their usability will emerge-for example, advance recognition technologies and user friendly interfaces. Like the whole 4G concept, terminals must also be designed around the user. A user-centric interface is the first step to fulfill this requirement. Advanced multifunction terminals (and their counterpart services) will not...
