Technology has come a long way when it comes to phones, but we need to look at where the future lies in new mobile phones coming out over the next few years, covering materials, power, processing, batteries etc.
Lets have a fun but reality look into the future: Smartphones are becoming more powerful, batteries will be of the fuel-cell kind, prices will sky rocket, home and business computers will be diminished in favour of smartphones, and the word in front of phones will not be smart, these are all the things we need to keep a close eye on.
We all know high-tech mobile devices as smartphones, but this name will not stay around for long, we know by now that they are smart, but new names will come in the future, the reason we say this is all down to the fact that they are not just phones anymore but something more powerful, are they computers, phones, tablets? They are a mixture off all the above. Personally they will be simply mobile device or super phablet, can you think of any new names that will come in the future? So let’s take a reality check into upcoming phones.
Design: If you look at current models and even new smartphones that are being released this year, there are no new designs that blow us away. We mean like the iPhone 4S that did not change at all in its design from the iPhone 4, most of the Android phones relatively look the same, companies need to move on from current designs and think out of the box. A completely new shape, new material, why do phones need to be the normal oblong format? Just a thought, so please tell us what shape-design you would like to see?
Screen/Display: Bigger is better is not really a true fact, the reason we say this is simply the case of “Bigger the screen, closer to being a tablet”. Personally we really do not need to go above the 4.65-inch screen size as that would touch on the tablet look, personally all future smartphones; sorry we mean ‘phablets’ should have built-in projectors or some sort of screen that can expand in size, that way we get the best of both worlds when simply using as a phone and viewing videos etc.
Battery: This is one that hits on the home truths of “UGLY”, the battery life on most phones nowadays is diabolical, the iPhone 4S suffers in this area and so do many other phones. What we need is fuel cell power, this is the future, or how about some sort of kinetic charge that powers on movement? If you have any new ideas about future battery power for mobile phones please do let us know.
Processors: We have moved into the quad-core era, the Intel Atom Z2460 chip aka ‘Medfield’ for smartphones. This is the best that we know of to date, if we look at the CPU power consumption covering identical display brightness this beats most smartphones. For example the iPhone 4S on 3G standby uses ~38mW, 3G talk time is ~800mW, 3G browsing is ~1.3W and 720p video playback is ~500mW, when we look at the Samsung Galaxy S II the numbers are as follows ~19mW/~675mW/~1.2W/~650mW respective.
But when you look at the new Intel Medfield reference the numbers come in at ~18mW/~700mW/~1.0W/~850mW, big differences in numbers. Apple will be releasing the new A6 into its next iPhone release, how will this fair with the new Intel Medfield reference?
Materials: The screens come in Gorilla glass, Retina display etc, but what about materials that change with touch, sort of a haptic feedback with texture? This new technology could be used for gaming, if users are playing a game that uses some sort of resistance, meaning when a user strokes the screen there will be some sort of pull.
Metal, plastic, carbon fibre, leather, glass etc have been used for the casings of phones, how about new materials such as gel with nano-technology that changes its shape?
We could go on and on all day long about new technology, but here are a few ideas that we thought we would share with you. Please do use our commenting area below and let us know what you would like to see in upcoming smartphones / phablets / superphones, call them what you may?