Smartphones have been racing in development, for a few years now. The pace at which they evolve was believed to be impossible 10 years ago. Today’s phone can track and locate you anywhere on the globe, connect you to anyone, offer your powerful applications that bend time and space alike. But it kind of poses the question, what else is there to update?
One would fail to imagine any major update that would change the smartphones scene. Yet, the fact that it’s hard to imagine doesn’t mean we’ve reached the end of it. Today, we’ll explore some of the hundreds of possibilities out there.
Bendable Phones:
In 2010, Nobel Prize was awarded for the proof of the existence of a material called graphene. Graphene is just carbon, structured like honeycombs. Its unique 2d structure gives it a lot of enhanced properties. The result? Bendable high performing electronics.
A graphene phone would be very thin and bendable that you can just fold it and put it in your pocket. Not only that, but the performance will be far better. Graphene can allow for better electronic circuits, which perform much faster than normal.
It’s also believed that graphene could achieve transparent phones, as complex as it may seem.
The current problem with graphene is in the production industry. It’s very hard to produce a single sheet of high-quality graphene. Not only that, but the processes at hand produce a lot of toxins that make a mass production out of the question. However, the research has been relentless ever since.
AI in smartphones:
The biggest and hottest topic right now in technology is Artificial Intelligence. A.I. has lately become the holy grail of computer science research. The strenuous effort to simulate the human brain in action has been relentless.
If you own an iPhone, you’re most probably familiar with Siri. Yet, Siri along with all A.I systems we have today are labeled Artificial Narrow Intelligence. They are masterful at some specific tasks, but they can’t go out of their scope. Artificial Narrow Intelligence is the first step of the A.I hierarchy, and so far it’s implemented in several applications on your phone. The Facebook people-you-may-know and the Google ads are all based on A.I techniques in machine learning.
When the current level of Artificial Narrow Intelligence has been mastered, we can expect all types of software upgrades to the smartphones. They’ll excel at many tasks that require human expertise. For example, instead of having dietary planners and training schedules, it could become your trainer all at once, monitoring your performance and analyzing for better results.
The next step that everyone has been talking about is Artificial General Intelligence. Something that would match human minds, only a thousand times faster in thinking. When we achieve that – if we ever did- your phone will be more like your super pet. It will be like having the world’s smartest human brain on your phone, only a hundreds of times stronger. It’s hard to predict, at the very least, the consequences of such breakthroughs.
The problem resides in multiple factors, however. First of all, we don’t completely understand the mechanism of the human brain to properly simulate it. There’s also the problem of controlling this A.I. Elon Musk’s newest foundation, OpenAI, aims to tame the beast and control this technology. In one of his most recent talks, he even suggested that maybe the safest way of integrating A.I is to add it to our brains.
Internet of Things:
We’re currently moving towards the automatization of everything in our lives. The fantasies of the ‘I, Robot’ and similar movies are not far from reach. And guess who’ll be the biggest culprit? Smartphones. Take for instance all of the Samsung phones on the market today, the vast majority of these have automatic updates, and for each of these minuscule updates the AI gets slightly improved.
The Internet of things is all about getting every activity in your life connected to the Internet. We’re saying “every” in the literal sense. Think of laundry, groceries, cleaning, etc. The smallest of everyday tasks, everything will be connected to the Internet, taking actions and collecting or transmitting data. Many experts foretell that smartphones could become your dashboard or control panel. They will allow you to harness IoT’s full potential and keep you in charge of everything the system’s doing.
Every major transition, however, has got its own problems. One of the major problems of the Internet Of Things is the management of the huge amounts of data transmitted and received. And above all, the security of the whole process. The system also includes a tedious amount of sensors, which isn’t easy to synchronize all at once.
The power of the Camera:
The smartphone’s camera has been one of the doors unlocking massive potential and features. Just recently, Apple’s iPhone X started to delve into the possibilities. The new release added facial recognition and animated emojis. So what else is there to expect?
Well, among the multiple upgrades that could take place, Augmented Reality is the most intriguing. Augmented reality is the integration of computer-powered graphics with reality’s feed. Just pointing the Phone’s camera on a specific place will provide you with a streamline of information that you would normally get a headache searching for. It makes traveling and exploring new places not only easier, but much more fun.
In the future, we may even be able to see emulations of historical eras when you point your camera towards historical places.
There are a few applications out there for AR, but they are limited and incomplete in performance. Still, the field will witness fruition in the near future.
How will the world look like?
All these changes make you wonder how the world of tomorrow might look like? While smartphones will bring a lot to the table, we undertake the risk of being enslaved by their power. We’ve already seen this scenario manifest in the real world, with the masses only caring about what the smartphone has to offer. Those who control the content and programs we have on our phones will be, to an extent, controlling the world.
Final Thoughts:
We can let our imagination run wild all it wants, but the real power
Smartphones can harness will most likely remain a mystery. Different technologies keep arising every once in a while to replace its predecessors. The only thing that is for sure is that whatever change the smartphones scene may witness, it will impact our lives drastically. Who knows when Elon Musk’s dream may take place and we get telepathy and enhanced brainpowers? Who knows which dream might take place next?
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