We take a peek into the future to see what the smartphone of tomorrow looks like.
In five years, the concept of a smartphone will change dramatically. How do we know this? Just look at the last half-decade. Since 2005, the Apple iPhone emerged as a cannibalizing platform, made for loading innovative apps, designed with finger-flicking ease-of-use in mind. The rumored Google Phone not only came out in the form of a new operating system, but the actual Nexus One as well. Accelerometers, touchscreens, GPS-based location awareness – these have also all appeared in full force in the last few years and changed the market entirely.
Toshiba T-01A
PC Replacements
The primary change will occur over the next few years as smartphones start behaving more and more like laptops. In June, DoCoMo started offering the Toshiba T-01A in Japan, a super-fast phone that uses an advanced Qualcomm chip. With these fast processors, smartphones will finally run full-blown apps such as Adobe Photoshop – and not just with the limited features offered in the current Photoshop app. There are already signs of other forthcoming power apps on the horizon as well, including tools that can handle photographic effects and process large, high-res images and videos.
Nokia recently launched the N900, which it calls a mobile computer. It runs a Linux operating system and can multitask like a MacBook. In 2015, these powerful laptop replacements will provide true multitasking where you can run Spotify to stream audio, chat over an IM client, process EXIF data for a massive photo collection, and even play World of Warcraft all at the same time. These uber-phones will have similar-size displays and use touch input, but the background processing will be much more advanced and allow full PC-like capabilities.
Augmented Reality
Connected Devices
The dream of fully connected, location-aware devices will finally come to fruition. This is more than just a simple Bluetooth dump between business phones, but a full data exchange – say, sending all your favorite apps over Wi-Fi to another smartphone, as well as every movie you have ever download, and all of your music.
“Your phone is likely to be situationally and contextually aware, and present information to you accordingly,” says John Jackson, a vice president of research at CCS Insight. “The phone — and the cloud-based server side intelligence behind it — will know you, your location, your social networks, and your preferences in food, media, and communication. It will predict your next moves. The multi-trillion dollar question is who enables it and controls the sources and uses of information.”
Location awareness will further lead to several other innovations. Phones in 2015 will know when you are near a McDonald’s or Starbucks and offer to pay your bill. Augmented reality – an emerging trend in 2009 – will become a social-awareness tool in the next five years as users link their phones. For example, connected devices could form into an ad hoc broadcast terminal at sporting events where you can view a video feed from a guy in the second row or up in the nose-bleed seats.
According to John Shen, the Lab Director at Nokia Research Center, the smartphone of 2015 will go even further: You will be able to link phones together to form a cluster where a group of phones provides PC-like processing capability.
Showing 29 comments
RSSI could see "upgrade" peripherals that give you more computing power, why not? Laptops arent that great at doing CPU intensive things and when a large screen is needed. However, why not just plug in to a dock that has a 24-inch screen and extra power?
But, at that point, the whole cloud issue comes into play again. At that point, why not just have a home computer that uses the cloud as well.
Most people just need email, web browser and maybe Word or something like that. Most phones already support it. Personally, I would ditch my iMac if I could use my iPhone as my main PC and just plug it into a nice monitor with keyboard etc.
Small display size, lack of decent user interface (mouse).
"What if the dock had a secondary graphics card for heavy duty stuff like this. A lot of the high-end laptops come with dual video cards, one for power saving use and the other for desktop type work. "
Your dock maybe as well be a laptop though! You have a monitor, keyboard, now you have a secondary graphics card?! Basically a laptop tbh.
"I am just saying, at the speed that mobile phones are growing, I don't think this is out of the question. Look at how powerful the iPhone and Blackberry already are."
I absolutely agree, phones will be powerful enough to do these things, I just don't think people will want to
"I think your example of the cloud is right on. I do not see phones as storing a lot of local stuff, it would likely have to be on the web."
The phone shouldn't have to store anything at all, its all in the cloud. So all you are really transporting between these docks of yours is a portable CPU. Seems pointless.
I am just saying, at the speed that mobile phones are growing, I don't think this is out of the question. Look at how powerful the iPhone and Blackberry already are.
I think your example of the cloud is right on. I do not see phones as storing a lot of local stuff, it would likely have to be on the web.
The only downside is when you are on the road. I'd still prefer a laptop!
I'm not convincing, personally I can't stand gaming on such a small display, and using photoshop to its full abilities would be unthinkable. I think the display size is severely limiting and smart phones will never replace the PC unless we get slim HMDs or such. And they don't look likely before 2015.