Along with widget enabled cell phones, I think that phones need to be more location aware. In short, they need to be able to detect my current location, make that location available to information services, and then use and display location based information. Some of these things are possible in a few of today's phones, but the services need to be more flexible and more common.

Location can be determined in several ways. Most accurate is likely via GPS, while cell tower triangulation and wifi hotspot location can also be useful. In many cases, the precision of the location isn't that important. If I'm within 500 feet of my apartment, that might be good enough to effectively place me at home. In some cases, even city based location would be enough, allowing my phone to update my weather widget to the city I arrive in when I step off the plane.

Publishing my location information enables the location-smartness of my phone to extend beyond my individual device. Publication should allow varying levels of granularity, allowing my wife to see my exact location, while an online profile gets updated with my city or time zone. The system must be permissions based, ideally in complete control of the user. This can protect against undesired uses, such as stalking. Allowing location publication to any online service will allow users to participate in a wide variety of services, including those we haven't thought of yet.

Finally, a device must be able to use location information. It might make the location available to phone software, such as a weather widget or a map showing current location. It would also be able to pull information from online services, allowing easier spotting of the nearest Chinese buffet, and being alerted when a friend is in close proximity.

Allowing my location data to be used like this allows all sorts of things that can make cell phones nicer to use. Imagine a behavior service that watches my current location and my schedule, and instructs my phone to change it's ring settings to match the situation I'm in. I would no longer have to manually silence my phone in theaters, in class, or in church. It would detect my position and understand my activity, and learn to behave accordingly.

Pictures taken with the built in camera can be geo-tagged and auto-uploaded to an online service. Finding the cheapest Gas nearby becomes trivial. Real-time traffic detection and alerts becomes a project within reach of a graduate student research project. What can you think of?

Just as nearly every cell phone today has a camera, soon every phone will be made location aware. A platform as open as Android will easily allow these services. We will wonder how we survived before.