Why Android 4.2′s Multiple User Account Switching Is Tablet-Only (Hint: Patents)

http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/29/why-android-jelly-bean-4-2s-multiple-user-account-switching-is-tablet-only-hint-nokia-patented-it-for-phones/

by Shooti • 14 years ago

55 28 14 years ago

techcrunch.com

paulgb2• 14 years ago

I'm all for bashing patents, but this seems to ignore the obvious: sharing fits the way people use tablets a whole lot more than phones.

jlgreco5• 14 years ago

Does it really? I would think "guest mode" on phones would be huge.

paulgb2• 14 years ago

I've seen tablets used as a household appliance akin to a TV or family computer. I'm not saying this would never be useful on phones, just that it's more obviously useful on tablets and TechCrunch seems to ignore this in favor of a more scandalous conclusion.

sabret00the• 14 years ago

Just out of curiosity, how often do you let someone else use your phone? Not check out your phone but actually use it to the point they'd require a guest mode? Guest mode on a phone is like flying lunches in via Concorde from Paris.

drivebyacct2• 14 years ago

I don't know patents, this is a TC article and there are few comments, but is there any possibility of truth to this? Would it then be possible to patent "using patent 20050107114 / 953850... but with tablets"? Doesn't that kind of show how inane the situation is?

epidemian• 14 years ago

Patent ALL "using a multi-user OS on X device" ideas!

jlgreco5• 14 years ago

Better yet, patent all "[Thing that has been done on 'computers' for over half a century], but on a PHONE!"

TYPE_FASTER• 14 years ago

Cisco wifi phones support logging in as different users.

jerrya• 14 years ago

This article is entire speculation (Hint: it's gaseous).

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?

fleitz• 14 years ago

Remember all those X on a computer patents? Well, welcome to X on a smartphone.

shawn-butler• 14 years ago

> 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.

[0] http://bitly.com/Q3okiK [1] http://bitly.com/TkSR6d

Steko• 14 years ago

90% of all mobile patents seem to take the form:

Computer function X, now on a phone (which is a computer)!

ck2• 14 years ago

I am sure cyanogenmod will port it if it's handy.

Remember you are at least allowed to root your phones, despite not being allowed to root tablets you paid for.

jordanthoms• 14 years ago

I agree that it sucks, but to be clear, you are not allowed to _break DRM_ to root a tablet you paid for. If the manufacturer supports it (e.g. Google), there is no problem.

TheAmazingIdiot• 14 years ago

How do you know, if you are a system geek, that you are indeed breaking DRM vs just doing complicated stuff with a firmware?

It seems obvious if there's PKI in there somewhere. But aside that, how do you tell the difference?

kschua• 14 years ago

Phones are more personal compared with tablets.

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

babebridou2• 14 years ago

There is a specific and yet extremely widespread usecase for switching account on a phone: to distinguish between personal and business use. I'm a different person at work with my phone than I am at home or at a pub. I don't want to clutter my gallery at work with thumbnail pictures of last week-end debauchery, though I do want to see the whiteboard pics I took every day after each design meeting. The notifications I want to receive at home are not necessarily from some automated JIRA sender.

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.

masonlee• 14 years ago

I would think it's that SMS and telephone features don't map well to multiple users. Would you share them across accounts or block them for all but one user? It's just weird.

babebridou2• 14 years ago

Sometimes you're not calling or SMSing a specific person but rather a place or a community ("Is John with you?", "Is everything alright over there?", etc) Sometimes it's even weirder to have to choose between calling Fred or Julie whenever you want to chat with the couple and don't want or need to show a preference for either of them.

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

goggles99• 14 years ago

This article is stupid. Who would want UAS on a phone? Everyone has their own. Tablets will replace the home PC in the next 5-6 years, not phones.

conradfr• 14 years ago

Just put it on the European Nexus then :)

It may not be the best feature on a phone, but a guest account could be useful.

antihero• 14 years ago

I don't think people share smartphones as they do tablets, so I can't see this being a massive issue. That said, if Google just make it pretty easy to hack it on (some conf file flag somewhere), would they technically still be infringing?

Why Android 4.2′s Multiple User Account Switching Is Tablet-Only (Hint: Patents)

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