Learnings from the Smart Phone Folks
Last updated
Last updated
After exploring lessons from the internet, we now turn to smartphones, the devices that revolutionized personal technology by integrating communication, computing, and connectivity. Smartphones built on the internet’s foundation, enabling seamless access to information, apps, and services anytime, anywhere. With touch interfaces, app ecosystems, and powerful hardware, they set new standards for usability, scalability, and innovation.
Think back to devices like the Apple Newton, Palm Treo, BlackBerry, and Nokia Communicator. These were precursors to the modern smartphone era. The true smartphone revolution, however, began in January 2007, when Steve Jobs announced the iPhone, transforming how technology and personal devices interacted.
Smartphones continue to serve as benchmarks for Software-Defined Vehicles (SDVs). Let’s explore how their key principles apply.
Consider a simple but illustrative example from popular culture: a smartphone app that makes a whip sound, as seen in The Big Bang Theory. As the app developer, you wouldn’t need to understand the physics behind measuring acceleration. You’d only need access to an API that provides acceleration data. Based on that, you’d program the app to trigger a whip sound when the phone moves fast enough.
Smartphone vendors invested heavily in creating APIs, abstraction layers, and reusable libraries, along with marketplaces like app stores. This infrastructure enables developers to build millions of apps, generating billions in revenue. APIs ensure different apps look and behave consistently while allowing third-party developers to build innovative features without needing deep knowledge of the underlying hardware.
App stores provide centralized distribution channels for apps. They ensure:
Quality Control through standard reviews.
Monetization Models with in-app purchases and subscriptions.
Developer Engagement through portals, hackathons, competitions, and early access programs.
Smartphone companies continually invest in these ecosystems, enabling faster development and ongoing innovation.
Smartphones use a hardware abstraction layer (HAL) to ensure compatibility across devices. This allows apps to run on different devices and future hardware versions. Developers don’t have to rewrite code when new smartphones are released. Instead, the HAL adapts their apps to new hardware, simplifying development and future-proofing applications.
Modern smartphones are packed with sensors like:
Light and proximity sensors.
Touchscreens and fingerprint readers.
GPS and communication modules.
Accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers.
The default apps use only a fraction of these sensors' potential, leaving the rest to the creativity of developers. This open ecosystem encourages novel applications, from fitness tracking to augmented reality.
Smartphones and automotive systems approach resource management with fundamentally different priorities. Smartphones emphasize flexibility and headroom to support third-party applications, enabling continuous innovation. In contrast, automotive systems focus on tightly optimized resource use, ensuring safety-critical operations and reliability.
Smartphones are designed with excess capacity, allowing developers to introduce new features and apps. This adaptability supports diverse workloads, frequent updates, and third-party innovation. Resource allocation dynamically scales to user needs, balancing performance and battery life.
Automotive systems prioritize efficiency and stability, with resources precisely allocated to predefined tasks. This ensures reliable performance for safety-critical functions like braking and steering. The highly optimized nature of embedded systems leaves minimal room for additional functionality or post-production updates.
The shift to software-defined vehicles (SDVs) aims to bring the flexibility of smartphones to automotive systems. By adopting hardware abstraction layers and scalable architectures, SDVs can enable dynamic resource management, fostering innovation while maintaining safety and reliability
The smartphone industry offers critical lessons for automotive development:
User-Centric Design: Prioritize user experience and personalization.
Ecosystem Integration: Build a platform that supports external developers.
New Revenue Models: Use app stores, subscriptions, and premium features.
Software-First Approach: Focus on software-driven innovation.
Frequent Updates: Enable over-the-air (OTA) updates.
Fast Innovation Cycles: Encourage rapid iteration and testing.
Data-Driven Insights: Use operational data for continuous improvement.
Developer Community Support: Invest in engagement and resources.
Platform Thinking: Create a flexible, scalable, and secure platform.
Global Scalability and Interoperability: Ensure compatibility across diverse environments.
Cybersecurity: Implement robust security features from the start.
The smartphone model inspires how SDVs can evolve. Non-safety-critical applications could run on a separate software stack above the hardware abstraction layer, isolated from critical systems like ADAS, energy management, and motion control. This setup would allow rapid feature development, app store-like distribution, and community-driven innovation.
The digital-first approach underpins these principles, emphasizing shift-north (moving functionality above the hardware layer) and shift-left (enabling early development and testing). This strategy promises a new era of automotive innovation, unlocking possibilities similar to the smartphone revolution.