Not to give my age away, but the first PCs I recall installing in a commercial workplace were four IBM XTs with Intel’s 4.77 MHz 8088 processor, 256 kB of RAM, 5.25-inch floppies and 20-MB hard drives. Total price tag, including custom software: ~$24,000.00 in mid-80s dollars, or about $50,000.00 in 2011 dollars. Their proud new owners were amazed by the increases in productivity the XTs delivered and declared the investment well worthwhile.
Fast forward to today and never out reach is a smartphone that boasts a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor (314 times faster than the 8088), 2 Gigabytes of RAM (8192 times more than the XT) and a 32 Gigabyte solid-state drive (1638 times that of the XT). You know, that’s a lot of computing capability, with or without the comparison to those old XTs. IT pros ought to be able to find some industrial applications for that kinda power! Indeed, it was a recent white paper from Honeywell Scanning & Mobility entitled Are Smartphones and Tablets Suitable for Use in Warehouse and Distribution Center Operations? that caused me to reconsider the remarkable capabilities of my beloved smartphone and to consider how those might translate into industrial contexts.
Why is my smartphone so endearing to me? I think it’s in large part because I’m by now so thoroughly familiar with it. Put simply, I’m entirely comfortable with its touchscreen-navigated Android platform and no longer have to think to take advantage of its remarkable range of capabilities. I envision what I want it to do and muscle memory takes it from there. Odds are, you are even more in tune with your smartphone than I am with mine, and it’s this element of familiarity that is among the primary drivers that is motivating enterprises to consider deployment of these consumer-grade devices in industrial settings.
But as much as my smartphone does for me, I’ve yet to use it to perform tasks that parallel those common to industrial settings. As the Honeywell team noted in its white paper, “… these devices are typically being used only for messaging, not data collection,” and it’s that data-collection function that is, of course, one of the keys to unlocking the potential of smartphones for solving industrial-grade problems.
I’m pleased that Honeywell is investing its substantial R&D resources into exploring the industrial potential of the ubiquitous smartphones, an effort that has already yielded fruit in the form it its SL22 Sled for the iPod Touch. Indeed, Honeywell’s commitment to extending the consumer smartphone form to industrial applications has also produced the industrial-grade Dolphin 70e Black, the IP67-rated Windows/Android smartphone that delivers the element of comforting familiarity together with the data-collection functions that industrial applications demand. For my part, I can’t wait to see what Honeywell comes up with next. Meanwhile, Honeywell’s white paper provides enlightening insight into the current industry thinking with regard to deployment of smartphones within logistics enterprises.