As a child, I remember walking into a Verizon Wireless store to see the 1st phone with a built-in color LCD, though it potentially wasn't the 1st on the market. It was the first I had ever seen in the flesh, and I was completely surprised. At the time, I could not understand how a colour LCD (the scale of a postage stamp) would be useful or required on a cell phone. Shortly after that, I can remember another trip to the same store months or years after to witness my first camera phone. I remember thinking the idea was abosolutely preposterous. Now, I can't imagine my existence without my smartphone and its various features that once existed as stand-alone, consumer products, but what's on the horizon now? What is the future of smartphones?
Obviously, it's difficult for anyone to predict the future. Any idea, discovery or invention has the ability to derail our entire understanding of the planet, our work habits, our tools and our life styles. Of course, we'll try and consider these unknown variables in our equation.
First, the bezel will slowly disappear. For the uninformed, the bezel is the part of the phone case that holds and surrounds the LCD. In a year or two, your phone's display will reach out to the edges the case. We'll potentially use capsules, smartphones and eventually notebooks like this for quite a long time.
As a society, we'll also learn to interact with our phones without depending solely on the touchscreen display and/or keyboard. Our voices are becoming the simplest way to engage with our phones now, and this can continue until it seems laughable to command your phone any alternative way unless, naturally, you are playing a game or using a program that needs the notice of your eye balls. This may also extend to the desk and mobile workstation.
On the subject of workstations, finally the "workstation" will simply be a display dock that connects with your smartphone, tablet or notebook. You'll dock your device into the "workstation", complete your work, read the web, do your thing, and then you'll take your personal computer with you when it's time to bounce. It'll be pointless to carry around memory cards and mobile HDDs because your complete computer will live in your pocket. Today, kids grow up with iPads and iPhones as their first computers, so there isn't any reason to presume these kids will flock to our old technological habits when they grow up. My two-year-old daughter's iPod Touch is the equivalent of my old Windows 95 box linked up to a CRT monitor.
Eventually, our phones will come fitted out with built in projectors. It sounds laughable, but we already have the technology to produce a viable consumer smartphone with a built in projector. What's the hold up, you ask? As is often the case in a capatalistic society, technical and scientific progress must be accompanied by a company that will turn it into a mainstream idea. When an able, market-shaping company steps in to properly design, market and support such a machine this will happen. And at some specific point those in-built projectors will not need a wall to operate , manufacturing 2D "displays" and 3D graphics out of thin air (like R2-D2's in-built projector from Star Wars: A New Hope).
Obviously, it's difficult for anyone to predict the future. Any idea, discovery or invention has the ability to derail our entire understanding of the planet, our work habits, our tools and our life styles. Of course, we'll try and consider these unknown variables in our equation.
First, the bezel will slowly disappear. For the uninformed, the bezel is the part of the phone case that holds and surrounds the LCD. In a year or two, your phone's display will reach out to the edges the case. We'll potentially use capsules, smartphones and eventually notebooks like this for quite a long time.
As a society, we'll also learn to interact with our phones without depending solely on the touchscreen display and/or keyboard. Our voices are becoming the simplest way to engage with our phones now, and this can continue until it seems laughable to command your phone any alternative way unless, naturally, you are playing a game or using a program that needs the notice of your eye balls. This may also extend to the desk and mobile workstation.
On the subject of workstations, finally the "workstation" will simply be a display dock that connects with your smartphone, tablet or notebook. You'll dock your device into the "workstation", complete your work, read the web, do your thing, and then you'll take your personal computer with you when it's time to bounce. It'll be pointless to carry around memory cards and mobile HDDs because your complete computer will live in your pocket. Today, kids grow up with iPads and iPhones as their first computers, so there isn't any reason to presume these kids will flock to our old technological habits when they grow up. My two-year-old daughter's iPod Touch is the equivalent of my old Windows 95 box linked up to a CRT monitor.
Eventually, our phones will come fitted out with built in projectors. It sounds laughable, but we already have the technology to produce a viable consumer smartphone with a built in projector. What's the hold up, you ask? As is often the case in a capatalistic society, technical and scientific progress must be accompanied by a company that will turn it into a mainstream idea. When an able, market-shaping company steps in to properly design, market and support such a machine this will happen. And at some specific point those in-built projectors will not need a wall to operate , manufacturing 2D "displays" and 3D graphics out of thin air (like R2-D2's in-built projector from Star Wars: A New Hope).
About the Author:
Fausto Mendez is the editor of ReleaseDates.co, a free website and subscription service that updates its readers only about the gadgets and brands they wish to understand about.