Why Android 4.2′s Multiple User Account Switching Is Tablet-Only (Hint: Patents)
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
It could be patents, but it doesn't prove that it is by any measure.
I would like to see multiple users on phones, because I would love to put my phone in guest mode whenever someone wants to borrow it, or whenever the lockscreen is unlocked without a pin.
If it really IS about patents it sounds like a great case to demonstrate the silliness of patents.
Smartphones ARE computers, they have computers within them, they run computer operating systems, ...
Computers have had multiple logins for decades. Tablets are allowed to have multiple logins.
Why on earth should multiple logins on smartphones be considered patentable?
The actual patent linked [0] makes several claims and it simply isn't just "multiple logins" whatever that means as you don't login to any phone from any vendor of which I am aware in the Symbian era (circa 2004). The SIM card represents your "login" to the phone network and this patent describes all the innovations that would be required to turn a single SIM card into a usable "public" or quasi-public resource (usage reports, access controls to apps and data, etc etc). Consider all of the services and technology that would be required to make this scenario possible, and more importantly usable (voicemail for each user, some way to indicate incoming calls for specific users, etc).
Computer operating systems support multiple user log-ins for time sharing of CPU resources and for data security. The concept here is not to have a multi user operating system in that sense. The idea is that the phone features can be shared, not the "computer" features.
So just simply having multiple logins to a linux kernel running on a phone with some UI trickery or a "jail" to enable a "guest" mode would not violate the claims of this patent as I understand them.
You may or may not be philosophically opposed to software patents but this probably is not the poster-child case for abuse you want to use in any reasonable discussion. Are there any of the claims made in particular you find objectionable?
I read the patent claims as enabling an extremely novel/innovative use case of a smartphone. Would you also find objectionable the patent application made by Zipcar [1] for the technique/technologies required to turn a privately held automobile into a shared public or quasi-public resource? Kind of what appeared in my mind's eye as I first read the Nokia patent.
It disables the networking, leaving the rest of the phone working.
How much developer effort could possibly be saved by merely neglecting to make a UI for this that can fit on a small screen, as well as a large one? This should be a solved problem.
Computer function X, now on a phone (which is a computer)!
Remember you are at least allowed to root your phones, despite not being allowed to root tablets you paid for.
It seems obvious if there's PKI in there somewhere. But aside that, how do you tell the difference?
It may not be the best feature on a phone, but a guest account could be useful.
Anyway, we've been there already, and it worked for the most part. We used to have one phone in the kitchen, one in the living room, one in my sister's room and we would all be fighting to not have to be the one to pick it up whenever it rang.
But it worked, and it wasn't exactly "weird" :P
How many people actually share their phones with someone else on a regular basis? I share my iPad with my family but we each have a phone.
Thus it makes more sense to have multiple user accounts on tablets (which is shared more often) than phones
Moreover, I've been working on projects that are founded on the assumption that the device is "public" (for instance a phone wired to a bus stop) or at least "shared": the devices that, say, train operatives use, could be tied to the train rather than to the user. I believe we would all greatly benefit from multi-user accounts on the phone.