Smartphones, even after incremental improvements, will look and function very differently from what we have now. The displays will be more vivid and foldable, the cameras will be so sophisticated that they could render even high-end SLRs obsolete, and the digital assistants within them will be more capable. The value of small, incremental improvements is often overlooked. Would there be an Instagram if the first iPhone’s camera hadn’t been so mediocre? If the camera hadn’t gotten so amazing, it wouldn’t have killed out an entire market. OLED is just a new method of showing pixels; however, it is flexible and consumes extremely little power, allowing us to fold our phones in half and answer calls using computers on our wrists.
Palm’s creator, Jeff Hawkins, revealed his final groundbreaking technology proposal fourteen years ago. By inventing the Treo smartphone before the release of the iPhone or Android, he had already defeated the industry leaders in the personal digital assistant (PDA) space with the PalmPilot. His third and last role was to play the role of a new sort of computer, a fake terminal that displayed information from your phone. It was dubbed the Foleo, but Palm put off releasing it because of other, more pressing issues.
Future phones that fold up
Multiple foldable phones, including the Samsung Galaxy Fold and the Motorola Razr 2019, were introduced in 2019 (though the latter wasn’t available to buy throughout the year), and their popularity is only expected to grow as more smartphones are released.
So, might we maybe all have foldable phones by the year 2029? That, of course, is the subject of how the telecom industry handles the next few years. Most consumers (apart from tech enthusiasts) don’t see foldable phones as viable options for their next phone purchase since they are seen as fascinating gimmicks.
Both their high cost and the lack of optimised software for their unique form factor contribute to this. People will quickly adopt foldable phones if they become widely available in the next several years at a price they can afford and, more significantly, if they are essential for particular purposes. However, whether or not consumers are willing to abandon the familiarity of “regular” phones in favour of the novel form factor of foldable phones in the next decade is an open question.
To what extent will 5G and 6G be adopted?
At the end of 2019, it is still unclear how long it will take for consumers to adopt the technology behind 5G, despite the fact that it is currently available in some countries. In high-speed places, where 4G is already faster than most people require, the increased speed doesn’t mean much because no apps have been released that truly make use of the high-speed connection. Following the trend of every new generation of connectivity, firms will begin releasing more 5G phones and fewer 4G handsets in the coming years, to the point where purchasing a 5G phone will be as “normal” as purchasing a 4G phone is now.
That’s not so much because everyone needs a superfast phone as it is because all the phones in stores will be 5G and there will be very few (if any) 4G models. Donald Trump has been requesting 6G technology, and it may be discussed before the end of the decade. However, this prediction depends on how well 5G is received and whether or not we actually want even quicker connections.
The bright future of selfie cams
The front-facing camera is one of the most distinctive aspects of modern smartphones, with designs ranging from the large notch of the iPhone to the teardrop notch of many others, the punch hole cut-out of many Samsung phones, the pop-up design of others, and so on.
But in the not-so-distant future, perhaps the display will be where the front-facing camera is. Even though Oppo has previously demonstrated this technology, other businesses are almost certainly developing similar features. The front camera is hidden in this manner, freeing up valuable real estate on the display and inside the device (like pop-ups do). And how about the camera hardware? Late in 2019, we saw a few smartphones with dual front-facing cameras—one for taking photos and another for depth sensing, allowing for more precise background blur.
Do we really need more rear-facing cameras?
You may believe that in the future, smartphones would have many more cameras than they have now, but that may not be the case. There are only so many types of lenses, and we may soon reach a point where adding more lenses doesn’t change much. The major shift, though, is expected to be in terms of megapixel count; as of the end of 2019, the Xiaomi Mi Note 10 has the highest resolution on a smartphone at 108MP, but other phones in 2020 appear to be aiming to equal that. However, in another decade, that figure may skyrocket. You’d be at least five times as close to the ceiling! Assuming perfect vision with a picture immediately in front of your face, scientists have calculated that the human eye sees around 576MP; but, if you’re staring at a phone at arm’s length and don’t have a faultless vision, that figure is larger than you’ll ever need.
