Speculating On the Far Future of Cellphones

Trio writes "What will cellphones look like in in future? silicon.com explores five future characteristics that could shape tomorrow's phones — from a wearable prototype such as MIT's SixthSense device which projects mobile data into the user's world, to a mobile that mixes the real and the virtual by using holographic telepresence. So far, so futuristic, but one question remains: will there be enough spectrum to support all this wireless communication?"

Comments

a REAL cellphone

[frecky]

Yeah, a real cellphone that let you dial a number and speak with someone. Not those with tons of addons that you forget you can dial number with !

SixthSense

[Enderandrew]

Never mind that it isn't practical to walk around with a huge projector on your chest, it isn't fashionable. There is certainly utility to a good web-enabled phone with plenty of apps, but I think people get sold initially on the style of an iPhone specifically. If people adopt new technology and new features in their next phone, style has to help sell it.

Otherwise, I think we're hitting a breaking point. What more functionality do we really want from our phone? How much more can you accomplish on a small screen? How much more money are you willing to pay for the device and the data plan? If anything, the pendulum might swing backwards as competitors try to ape 80% of the iPhone's functionality at half the price.

Re:SixthSense

[Kratisto]

Well, projectors are shrinking and making their way into devices like digital cameras. When someone figures out how to make green laser diodes consistently and with efficiency to match blue and red diodes, I expect projectors may replace LCD screens entirely in devices for which size is such a big factor.

As for functionality, there's no reason why your cell phone shouldn't be able to do everything your computer can (in the future), and costs of old technology will continue to fall as new technology becomes available.

Fun, but pointless

[podom]

I can imagine a similar discussion in 1875: "What will telegraphs look like in the future?"
 

Mini-computers

[Alaska Jack]

I always figured that the future was in phone/PC convergence. Which is to say, rather than syncing your smartphone with your computer, your smartphone would BE your computer.

Coming in to your office, You'd pull your PC out of your pocket, sit it on your desk and plug in a monitor. It would connect to a wireless keyboard and mouse, and away you'd go.

WHen you left to go home or to a meeting, you'd unplug the monitor, stick it in your pocket and off you'd go. The only other thing is you'd pay a cloud service to do incremental backups over wireless or cell service.

Seems pretty straightforward to me.

    - AJ

Re:Spectrum? Limitless, except for the State...

[CannonballHead]

I listen to the radio.

Why is it that because you don't listen to the radio, it is useless?

Radio is cool. It's completely free and I can find really good music on it. For free. No payments necessary to Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, or Sprint.

"elsewhere-ness"

[peter303]

Where you are with a small group of humans with no electronics you are talking directly to each other, looking them in the eye, or at their body language. Sometimes you touch too.

Now when you are in a public space like a coffee-house, walking the street, sitting on the train, etc. many people are communicating with those out of sight and completely ignoring those in sight. To me it feels like a zombie movie.

Re:"elsewhere-ness"

[JonBuck]

There was an old stand up routine by Dana Gould that had a man walking down the street, talking to himself. Ten years ago this would be a crazy person. "You can't tell a Navy man when he's had enough to drink! Only a Navy man knows when he's had enough to drink!"

Now, you have to check his other ear to see if he has a Bluetooth earset.

I feel like we're in the "Slow Take Off" first chapter of Stross's _Accelerando._

Re:Features, and lots of them!

[timeOday]

Given that the most-used features of cellphones are things other than talking on the phone (presumably included in the "Other 9%")

Even if this were serious, it only seems odd because we use the misnomer "cellphone" instead of something more accurate like, I dunno, personal digital assistant. Imagine if people insisted on thinking of PCs as typewriters (since word processing was an early killer app) and they were still called typewriters, and people started whinging that PCs shouldn't be able to run web browsers because "that's not typing," and "when will we all return to typewriters that just type!" It's nonsense.