What Features To Expect In Future Smartphones
Smartphones are about to get even brighter. Before the middle of the 2000s, cell phones couldn't do even a tiny portion of what they can now. Now, thanks to some recent advances in technology, there will be a lot of new features on smartphones in the future that will keep us hooked on our little digital devices.
No Sim Cards
Manufacturers have tried to make SIM cards smaller, but they still feel like something from the 1990s. The good news is that Apple and Samsung are working hard to eliminate SIM cards by replacing them with electronic versions.
You can quickly switch between network providers if your phone has a programmable SIM card built in. You won't even have to ask for a new SIM card. That should be very helpful for people travelling or living abroad and wanting to get a local phone number. The technology could appear in new smartphones as early as next year.
Nanotechnology Batteries
At Mobile World Congress 2015, the Israeli tech company StoreDot showed off a customized Samsung Galaxy S5 with a battery that used nanotechnology and could charge from 0% to 100% in less than a minute.
The technology came about because of research on how to treat Alzheimer's disease. Researchers learned from their study that the disease-causing peptide molecules have a very high capacitance, which makes them great little electrical storage units.
There is one catch: the StoreDot battery only lasts about two-thirds as long as a regular lithium-ion smartphone battery does at this point. The company should be able to improve the technology soon, though. Samsung has already put a lot of money into StoreDot, and the company is talking to manufacturers about putting its battery into future smartphones.
Smart Cameras
At a 2015 event, Qualcomm showed off a camera that could recognize the things it was looking at. The system works by checking objects in the real world against a vast database stored on the device. The best part is that you can teach the software to understand more and more. It's like a baby AI.
This technology has tremendous potential, letting cameras do many smart and practical things in the real world. As part of Google Photos, the company has also worked on deep search identification software like this. As camera hardware keeps improving and smaller, phones will soon all have this feature.
Excellent Voice Interaction
Voice interaction has been around for a while. Over the years, minor improvements have made it possible for virtual personal assistants and knowledge navigators like Siri from Apple to be made. Yes, but that's only the beginning. Very quickly, the algorithms used in voice-assisted apps are improving.
Since technology is getting better and better all the time, it won't be long before AI is so smart that it gives you advice from nowhere. So we don't become slaves to our phones in the future, let's hope that the people who make them remember to program Asimov's three laws of robotics into them.
3D Virtual Reality
The news about virtual reality has mostly been about headsets that are about to come out, like the Oculus Rift, Playstation VR, and HTC Vive. Smartphone VR technology has gotten less attention. Whatever the case, the new 4K smartphone screens 2016 are perfect for VR apps.
When put into a head-mounted device, the phone will become the display for the VR headset, and the 4K resolution will help make the experience immersive and accessible of pixels. Of course, this might or might not be a good thing since many of us already look at our phones and ignore what's happening around us.
Pressure-sensitive Displays
It has been shown that companies can make screens that sense pressure with the Force Touch feature on the Apple Watch. Users can control their phones in even more ways with controls that tell the difference between a light tap and a firm press. This is especially helpful for gamers.
Samsung has also filed a patent for something called "Touch Display Apparatus Sensing Force," which uses the same technology. In July 2015, the Chinese company ZTE showed off the ZTE Axon Mini, which also has a pressure-sensitive touch screen.
Using Photonic Crystal Displays
Most modern smartphone screens can show a wide range of very saturated colours, but most don't do very well when the light changes. Researchers and developers are now looking at photonic crystals to get around this problem.
A photonic crystal display doesn't give off bright light like an LCD or OLED display. Instead, it has nanostructures that change with the amount of light around them. Although the photonic screen needs a light source from the outside to be visible, this could be quickly built into the phone, just like in e-readers like the Kindle Paperwhite.
Apple and Google have been putting a lot of money into photonics to show you how near this technology will be. Also, Samsung showed off the idea of a flexible phone with a photonic crystal display back in 2013. In the next few years, these screens will likely show up on smartphones.
Conclusion
Future smartphones will have innovative features. Innovation is evident, from SIM card elimination to nanotechnology batteries with ultra-fast charging. Smart cameras with object recognition, advanced voice interaction, and smartphone 3D virtual reality are coming. Pressure-sensitive and photonic crystal displays promise a bright future for intelligent and versatile mobile devices.