Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) <[email protected]> writes: > On Fri, 28 May 2010 17:19:53 +0500 Shaz <[email protected]> said: > > > > > > > > > We can't expect a smartphone or a mobile or a handheld to have > > > > > > > multiple users. Can we? [...] > > > > Can you guys suggest a usecase? > > > > > > My spouse lending my phone, so that she has access to her own > > > database, messages (and even SIM if we should choose to exchange it). > > > Lending the phone to another person (that's what PIN2 is for, AFAIK). > > > > Still not satisfied because sharing phones is very unusual. > > people often enough say: "my phone battery is dead - can i use > yours? i'll use my sim card so you don't have to pay". and you lend > them your phone. you'd like the user logged in to be tied to the sim > card in this case, so new sim card == create new empty user for it.
Many households also *do* just share one phone--rather than belonging to an individual, it's basically a `house phone' that just happens to be wireless. The same goes for laptops, actually; and it's hard to imagine anyone saying "sharing computers is very unusual" with a straight face, even today. Even in, say, a family where everyone has their own phone, *smartphones* are still precious enough for it to be prohibitive for everyone to have one of *them*--when everyone in the household has a cheap candybar phone, and Mom or Dad has the one smartphone, it makes quite a bit of sense for everyone else to be asking `(Mom|Dad), may I use the smartphone?'. Indeed, as my own familiy approaches to the point where I have kids who are old enough to have phone-calls and e-mail with friends, but not ready to be set given the responsibility of managing their own smartphone, I can see myself being more attracted to this pattern. > another case - corporate use. companies want to make their employees > do more outside the office - this means being mobile. this also > means you have, these days, a company phone AND a private phone > often enough. the company wants their specific apps and > customisations isolated on their phones. not mixed up with tonnes of > other junk/malware/games you install on your private phone. as such > this separationg is possible via users on a single devce, so in the > long term when in "work mode" you simply switch to the work user id Indeed--the Nokia that I bought my wife a two years ago already does something like this. One can tell by the specific nature of the feature that their implementation is more klugey (`You can have TWO separate home screens!'), but the end user experience is close enough to be a supporting example. If my FreeRunner doesn't end up going this way, then I guess my wife will be the one who whom the kids ask, `Can I use the smartphone?'. -- "Don't be afraid to ask (λf.((λx.xx) (λr.f(rr))))." _______________________________________________ Shr-devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shr-project.org/mailman/listinfo/shr-devel
