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What's Next For Smartphone Innovation
SternisheFan sends in an article about the new features and developments we can expect out of smartphones in the near future. The shortlist: more sensors for tracking the world outside the phone, more gesture-based (i.e. non-touch) input, and integration with wearable computers like smartwatches and Google Glass. From the article:
"These under-appreciated components -- the gyroscope, accelerometer, magnetometer, and so forth -- are starting to get more friends in the neighborhood. Samsung, for instance, slipped pressure, temperature, and humidity sniffers into the Galaxy S4. They may not be the sexiest feature in your phone, but in the future, sensors like accelerometers will be able to collect and report much more detailed information. ... In addition to air quality, temperature and speed of movement are also biggies. [Also, a smartphone that can] track your pulse, or even double as an EKG, turning the everyday smartphone into a medical device. ... [For wearable computing,] your smartphone is still there, still essential for communicating with your environment, but it becomes only one device in a collection of other, even more personal or convenient gadgets, that solve some of the same sorts of problems in different or complementary ways."
What do you think will be the next generation of killer features for smartphones?
Simply adding existing sensors to phones is not 'innovation'. It's the logical outcome of miniaturization and reduced power requirements, despite what the marketing says. Between Apple and most of the car manufacturers the word 'innovation' seems to have lost all meaning.
reasonable battery life. I stick with my dumbphone until that happens.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Given that the touchscreen is at best imperfect for keyboard use, bringing back an integrated physical keyboard (e.g. a slider) back to higher-end models would be an innovation.
There is only so far a touchscreen can go before a full array of physical buttons outclass the screen - especially when it comes to input that doesn't have direct sight.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The next killer feature for smartphones will be phones that you can sit on - well sit on and not break.
Also, I expect to see them become a little more distributed. A "brain" you leave in your pocket 99% of the time plus seperate UI devices like pebble watch + headset or even google glass.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Lethal injection needle, of course.
... so I expect more sensors in the next wave. And improvement in quality of the existing ones.
After that, I expect some work on the API's for these sensors. And I expect to see basically ANY type sensor that can be miniaturized in a cheap and effective package to appear on the phone. I've already seen Geiger counters you can attach to a phone - if you could make them small enough, the Japanese market is yours.
Also nice:
- A good (near-medical quality) heartrate monitor is doable right now, but would benefit from better color detection in the camera and for Android, a better API. It only works on iPads right now.
- Stereo microphones would help a lot for sensing distance and possibly volume of rooms.
- An inbuilt laser for medium distance measurement would combine VERY nicely with a lot of other sensors.
- that extreme wideband radar that can see through walls and clothing
- infrared sensors
As for other features: apart from the sensors, the communication and the processing power? I think user interface options like laser keyboards. And output options such as the pico-beamers you can already buy. It all needs to become much smaller, but then it would certainly add value.
The main feature: energy storage. We really need better batteries.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
I can't give a whole answer but I when I had a flip phone I really felt like I was a train conductor in the 1800s pulling out my flip phone to check the time. I still feel that having this big lump in my pocket is fairly stupid. I do like the idea of a watch seeing that it was a convenient replacement for the pocket watch. But it has three failings that I haven't seen and can't think of how to solve and those are getting the sound into your ear, viewing a larger screen, and how to type text messages into your wrist.
People are blah blahing about google glasses and this solves two probems of getting sound into your ear and getting a larger screen but data entry is still a problem. I don't see voice commands as being something that will really work. In many places it would be funny to run up to people and yell "Google Glasses Open (insert most disgusting website you can think of here)" But there are too many quiet places where even mumbling to your glasses will not work. Plus wearing glasses when you don't need them is a bit of a pain.
So limiting my prediction to the near future I see people with a smart phone tucked away in a pack or deep in a pocket, a wrist interface that gives them limited interaction with their phone, and a Saul Goodman style earpiece when they need to talk. But I do foresee some ingenious texting interfaces for the wrist where you can dial up common responses to other people's texts. Maybe your phone will predict your top 10 probable responses and you can select on of those most of the time and dig the lump out of your pocket when you need to do something more advanced.
One big prediction that would even bet on is that for those people who don't maintain a home PC that they will be the people who get the ginormous screened phones. With a ginormous phone(borderline iPad mini sized) and a tiny watch thing you would be pretty well off for most media consumption and not be forced to hold a brick up to your ear.
Now on the mech engineering side. Where is my commuter car-plane that is parked on my drive way? huh? What about the high speed trains running in vacuum tunnels going from NY to LA in 90 minutes? Still the same internal combustion engine burning the same damned oil. What happened to crystallic fusion? Dont tell me "aah, we got double As".
Civil, you are not off the hook either. Where the hell is my damned home that is mounted on a pivot that tracks the sun? All engineering fields except electronics have been slacking on the job and have a very disappointing track record.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
There are a number of startups out there really focused on getting money transfers going for cell phones. Like this one.
Based on the number of companies doing it, and their high profiles, I would guess that doing money transfers on phones is something that is about to take off soon. The hurdles are mostly regulatory and network based (you need to connect with the network), and with so many people trying to take on the problem, I imagine one of them at least will be able to make it through.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Post something against the government, receive lethal execution. Then their organ harvesting vans could pick them up promptly, aided with the location feature of the phone.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
When you can bring all the powerfulness of your PC in your pocket
Duh.
rounded triangles!
because that is what the customers want. What? You thought you were the customer? Sorry, you are renting it from the REAL customers: the telco's.
All the rest will be around how good they can track you and how easy they can take money from you.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
...the future is here:
http://www.google.com/patents/US20120040655
is in software, not hardware. Smartphones are about smart software, nothing else.
A keyboard an full OS.
I think Heterogenous computing will play a key roll in increasing battery life in the next few years. AMD, ARM and Samsung among others have been working to get an API together that will allow regular code to work on a CPU or a GPU depending on which will perform the best as long as the processor and GPU are on the same piece of silicon and share the same memory cache. Studies (http://pbbakkum.com/db/) have shown that sqlite gets a 15% performance increase (or less power usage per query) by running the database off a GPU, and Oracle (http://news.softpedia.com/news/AMD-and-Oracle-Team-Up-for-Heterogeneous-Computing-on-Java-295882.shtml) is working on project "Sumatra" which will allow Java applications to get better performance with less power. Tie this in with Samsung creating a new HSA enabled device, and we could see some interesting changes in the phone market!
I want my slide-out keyboard to return. In Europe. On an Android 4.2.2+ phone with sufficient horsepower and working memory, please?
One word: Teledildonics.
That's what I want. A full surface screen.
That could make your phone beautiful.
You can add that for tablets. Seriously, why do neither of these devices have proper support for extending your computer to them? At he OS level, not simply the App level. transfer of files, control of your screen, etc, after sync and activation of the device via USB orsomething?
maybe google can make a proper quite of software to address this, and add it to Android. Mediaplayer/iTunes/winamp remote, browser transfer (and how about a decent browser to go with it), extended video display (tablet/phone act as an extra monitor in echoe or extension mode), media streaming to device,
make the phone and tablet actually work WITH the desktop device, instead of repeating everything done on it over and over again via a multiude of resource hogging apps.
Screw all that other crap. I need 2 days of expected battery life so that after 2 yrs of use, 1 day will actually be possible.
That doesn't mean babying the device either. I need to leave wifi, cell phone, and GPS running 48 hrs, plus have 10 apps running the entire time.
Last weekend, I was in Seoul trying to use a city guide app, a subway app, take a few panorama photos, and use local wifi whenever available. The Nexus 4 battery was fully charged when I started out at 7am. by 2pm, it was down to 10%. Unacceptable.
Battery life. Please, please, please.
I am ready to see the smart phone go the way of the do-do. I am waiting for cell-phone watches to move along a bit. Small, unobtrusive, out-of-sight. Big smart-phones are the equivalent of bling......they look cool, but don't really add anything to my life except another toy to have to replace when it is sat upon, dropped or stolen. They are kind of like the equivalent of sports cars. "Look at my phone. Imagine how big my genitalia must be..." meh...
Just a few more sensors, add the right apps, smartphone becomes a tricorder, or at least as close as we can get with current technology.
With Smartphones used so much for photography now, it's sad that we don't have at least 1-2x optical zoom on most phones.
Medical sensors are definitely more important. But I believe optical zoom would be used more overall.
And yes, it would be innovative because it's apparently a very difficult problem to solve on a massive scale and within a marketable pricepoint.
Capturing some of the comments above and my own, I'd like to get back to basics.
- voice calls whether it's by mobile phone provider or Skype.
- real keyboard.
So the short version:
N900 style with the best of Nokia plus the latest hardware with the clean software of Google Nexus.
and no FB integration!
Upgrading the CPU. Replacing the battery. Adding more RAM. All these will be possible with the modular phone.
http://rhombus-tech.net/
http://aseigo.blogspot.nl/2013/04/the-luminosity-of-free-software-episode.html
http://www.golem.de/news/aaron-seigo-vivaldi-tablet-mit-austauschbarer-open-hardware-1304-98707.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq0Dx04PcHk
To hell with the humidity sniffers and the rest. I most want a phone with a battery good for at least three days at my current usage patterns, which right now give me like 1/2 a day. I hate having to tether my phone to a charger everywhere I go during the day.
I have an idea. Stop making the phone thinner so you can brag about it being the thinnest. How about make a version of the top phone that's actually thicker, and then brag about battery life? You know, how Motorola did with the Razr Max?
I don't mind the rush to add more features to phones, but I wish more effort could be spent on the obvious missing feature: better voice quality. Now that internet bandwidths are high enough to stream HD video, why can't we have intelligible voice communication? I can make a VOIP call from my smartphone that sounds like a land line. But a regular phone call is often so garbled that you spend more time saying "WHAT?" than communicating.
To avoid seeing this message again, always shut down your computer properly by selecting Shut Down from the Start Menu.
"Look at my phone. Imagine how big my genitalia must be..."
You could not be father from the truth. Penile insecurity is not the reason for larger screen...they simply offer a larger viewing area. Ironically earlier adopters of pablet [tabone maybe] were small women...not sausage finger 7' Men as I would have expected, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out why [and It wasn't due to a gaping V-J]...it was because they have handbags.
Hopefully its if and not when Apple decide to expand their product line to include a mini and a maxi phone, otherwise they are in danger of losing relevance even faster than they are now. And we will continue to have drivel about the one true phone propaganda for the like of you.
What do you think will be the next generation of killer features for smartphones?
Probably biofeedback sensors that can transmit as well as receive. That way, not only can your smart phone monitor your heart rate, it can send a pulse to stop it, too. That would definitely be a killer feature.
With the world going to HE double hockey sticks, perhaps someone wants to add a radiation detector to a phone? Fukushima, North Korea, Iran, Taco Time Burritos...it all adds up!
Personally I want to move control over the phone from the company...to me. Android is the best option out their right now, but its a long way from being an optimum solution. Increasingly they are becoming devices others control.
All the features in the world don't matter when you have typically horrible service. Or at least a feature that allows me to nuke Sprint.
software defined radio, so you can move phone from different networks without worrying about if your phone is gsm cdma or whatever
It's not quite an innovation, but how hard would it be to take for designers to forget planned obsolescence, pull their heads out of their fundamental orifices and simply make them waterproof?
since touchscreen isn't reliable that's what i'm looking for in my next android phone.
What's next for smartphones is not in the phone, it's outside the phone. I think we will see sensors - yes maybe in the form of a (i)watch - that communicate with the phone, and that gather and send data like heart rate, position, nfc. They will work independently, have their own batteries, have a much longer battery life, no lcd screen, maybe an epaper screen.
The "analysts" are, too. On top of that, phones are still a "platform" to deliver "an experience" ment only to please you insofar it lets the carrier "own" you. Thus the walled gardens. Thus the NFC push, with a secure element in your phone that isn't owned by you. It owns you, instead.
In that context, any and all extra sensors is more ways to spy on you. That is all.
What I'd like? As a phone, a device that lets me connect with the rest of the world. As a computing device something that lets me run my own code and have full control over every aspect of the hardware. Yes, down to the GSM stack, and it's possible. Combining, a device that shows me the available ways of communication and lets me take full advantage of every one in reach, any way I'd like. Enhanced by my own apps.
This is something quite different than the "seamless integrated experience" that apple does so well -- we already have that, thank you. Now for a raw power in my hands communication tool.
Plus, robust hardware that actually performs above and beyond "tickbox level" that fails to deliver when pushed (looking at you, "enterprise class" nokia phones). Good battery life. In that context, linux is and always be too heavy, simply because it contains too much code and never was designed for low-power use. You can get a long way, sure, but never quite as far as, say, psion got (before nokia fucked it up under the symbian moniker).
And then there's this: Privacy. Every single phone fails on this point in at least one way. Pity we'd need different protocols to really make it happen (ought to be part of 5G, so EU, if you're listening, make it a requirement for the subsidies you're tossing the phone industry for making 5G happen). Smartphones fail on this in more than one way, and there's really no way to fix that in the current models, so better models are needed. As well as more due dilligence. Too bad we'll only get a little fake bit of the latter, no more.
But for starters, I'll take a dual-sim (micro sim, no smaller) candybar no thicker than a centimetre, fits in trouser pocket, with a basic camera, 3.5mm jack, micro sd, wifi, voip, tethering, modem with working fax support (that really is but a SMOP, but occasionally oh so useful), basic packet data support, voice encryption, at least a week of stand-by, and cyanogenmod support or equivalent under some other OS. This obviously fits the models of exactly nobody who has any influence on what sort of phones will become available.
And so the notion of "innovation" among phones will remain rather vapid, as usual and by now entirely expected.
iPhone owners aren't the ones that need more battery power.
reasonable battery life. I stick with my dumbphone until that happens.
The iPhone 5 today, gets around two days of battery.
However a significant portion of the battery use is LTE. If you are willing to have a somewhat slower network, the iPhone may make it three or four days (can't confirm, have not tried).
The point is that if battery life is an issue for you, then look at a platform that has all along been ensuring that battery life is preserved when possible.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Given that the touchscreen is at best imperfect for keyboard use, bringing back an integrated physical keyboard
I would be with you except that any keyboard that fits in or around a smartphone is ALSO imperfect. I HATED all of the physical keyboards, even the Blackberry... I can type more accurately and with larger keys on a virtual on-screen keyboard.
That is why they went away, because they really are not better at all.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Soon your smartphone will be able to sniff every fart you cut loose.
After that, I expect some work on the API's for these sensors. And I expect to see basically ANY type sensor that can be miniaturized in a cheap and effective package to appear on the phone. I've already seen Geiger counters you can attach to a phone - if you could make them small enough, the Japanese market is yours.
There is already an andriod app that does this all you need is a piece of tape to put over the camera CCD which acts as a geiger tube. I don't know about the accuracy but supposedly it has no problem detecting background.
Flexible screen.
Multiple screens that couple into one larger screen.
Laser keyboard.
Projector.
Dockable to make a useful notebook replacement.
Or a totally flexible phone that survives your back pocket. And doesn't trigger the humidity sensor.
Voice commands? How about I get a text from my wife, and I say "tell her I'm on my way" and the phone replies accurately. Of a call comes in and I say 'I'll call back later" and the call is answered with an appropriate voice response.
I'm never going to make these happen, so use these ideas and make a million. You're welcome.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
'invented' a device called the 'Joymaker':
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joymaker
"The remote-access computer transponder called the "joymaker" is your most valuable single possession in your new life. If you can imagine a combination of telephone, credit card, alarm clock, pocket bar, reference library, and full-time secretary, you will have sketched some of the functions provided by your joymaker. - from the novel 'Age of the Pussyfoot'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_the_Pussyfoot
Except for the described pharmaceutical capabilities, it sounds a lot like something that should be available ,like ...NOW; or at least within the next couple of years!
Siri and google's voice input aps are not QUITE up to the joymaker's standard. The medical-treatment and chemo-recreational capabilities will probably be a long-time-comming, but for political, not technical reasons. On the other hand, Pohl's technology relied on large timeshared computers for processing power; a Nexus 7 would probably been considered pure SF in 1965 (Quad GHz processor!?! GIGABYTES of memory?!? Is that a supercomputer in your pocket?).
I want a generic revolution in smart phones. Android goes part way there, but not far enough.
I don't want anything to come from the carrier except packets and monthly bill. Like my ISP. Phone branding by the carrier should just go away. Spectrum should not belong to anyone. Carrier should just be licensed to use the National Allocated Spectrum by the FCC.
Phones should be modular. Want to upgrade the phone battery? Or radio? Add a keyboard? Not a problem. Root access should be expected, not something that has to be obtained by hacking.
On the back.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
... probably going to be rather hard to implement right now. But maybe it can happen in a decade or so when they figure out the "hardware" for this. I want seamless elasticity. That is, the phone should be able to stretch and shrink (not fold or slide parts) in either or both directions, and hold the size (e.g. NOT snap back like a rubber band). And of course it should notify apps what size the phone is now.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Simply adding existing sensors to phones is not 'innovation'.
I disagree. There are a million different kinds of sensors that could be added. Innovation is almost NEVER about parts that are wholly new. It's about combinations of things that at first are not apparently that much related and using them in, dare I say it, innovative ways.
A light sensor for example, I personally would not have thought to add to a phone to use to turn off the display when held to the face. I'm not saying it's Apple that did that first, but that to me is a true innovation despite light sensors being around forever.
Even figuring out a clever use for sensors already put in phones can be innovative.
I would also note that just because sensors get smaller and need less power it's not exactly obvious that they should go a in a personal computing device. X-Ray sensors are probably smaller and use less power than they used to but I don't find it an obvious fact they will be in future phones.
On a side note, those who proclaim nothing Apple has ever done is innovation are truly the ones who have robbed the word of real meaning. In an effort to spite Apple they have made true innovation an impossible goal.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Try not looking at your screen and trying to type - spontaneously. The lack of feedback from that screen is going to make that harder compared to having less time dedicated to looking at the keyboard versus looking at the screen and getting more precise feedback from the keyboard.
That flat touchscreen just doesn't cut it when the touchscreen ends up being out of order.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
If you put flagship level performance and promote them as such, then you'll have the support.
The only reason those "failed" was that they were mid-tier phones and not top-tier ones (as done before with QWERTY).
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Try not looking at your screen and trying to type - spontaneously.
Ok, works fine.
That's because touch-typing relies not on having a keyboard but muscle memory about where the keys are. Which works fine on a touch screen when you have been typing on it for a while.
I can type "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" without looking, with only the word jumped (turned into junkie by autocorrect) needing fixing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Make phones that are the size of the HTC Aria/Liberty/Intruder!!!! Then we'll talk. Everything larger than that size is horrible and unwieldy. There is no technical reason why smartphones are so bulky.
RF receiver with coverage of at least 200khz thru 5ghz with at least 50 mhz sampling bandwidth and an external mini bnc connector. Transmitting would be nice too within at least the 6 and 13mhz ISM.
Transducer/sonar for looking thru walls, distance, speed and crap.
Always on combo LCD/eink display.
A real ring lazer gyro to replace mems crap.
A small physical keyboard of some kind or better yet a touch screen with software defined depressible regions. It needs to feel like a real keyboard... no haptic crap.
Lazer with class selection so we can use it for presentations or goofing off (lazer tag..etc) freespace communications..etc. Oh and a mems mirror lense for lazer light shows.
Cheap IR transeceiver to control TVs and crap..the old PDAs had these and it was cool.
IR blackbody temperature sensor.
Flashlight a real one not some crap camera flash thing.
Highly sensitive 3D magnetometer able to track fields from any orientation.
Multimeter/oscope mode with port to attach probes.
Reliable hardware..chipkill memory, transactional buses, multi-core quorum modes..etc.
Persistant storage that does not suck power/time or has a limited cycle life (memristers..etc)
Hyperspectral camera and geiger tube
Spectrometer
Unfoldable/sliding display for increased viewing area.
Waterproof and floats in water.
Freedom to install anything and full baseband access.
sensors like accelerometers will be able to collect and report much more detailed information. ... In addition to air quality, temperature and speed of movement are also biggies
Hmm — a computing device that can collect information about the speed, acceleration, position and temperature of its host or another object, modify its host's parameters accordingly and communicate this information to another computer. We've had "killer apps" like these for years — they're called "guided missiles".
Cell phones need better microphones and noise canceling so that people on the other end can hear better. This would have the added benefit of greatly reducing how annoying their users are to those around them as people would no longer feel the need to talk really loudly into their phone. Imagine what a better society we would have with this one small change.
world war 3... in courtrooms
Flip phones with Star Trek sounds of course!
Where the hell do they think I'm gonna be sticking it on my body?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
pressure, temperature, and humidity sniffers
It's dark, moist and 98.6 F --- activate the vibrator function!
Your battery life is going to be better on LTE if you're in an area where the coverage isn't too spotty.
Well most of us live in major cities where even just buildings alone, never mind off cell tower coverage, ensure that is not the case.
I'm currently using Verizon, which I would say has better coverage than anyone. There has yet to be a major city I've visited (Denver, San Francisco, Minneapolis) where coverage strength has not been all over the place. I don't really care because two days is enough battery life and I do like the speed when I'm using it. But I'm not going to pretend that coverage anywhere is great because it just really isn't. That's just the realistic nature of how cell connections will always be given the huge variability in factors that give you good signal.
It's not a "two year old meme", it's simple physics.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Also, 'tard, I must take exception with your mischaracterization of LTE battery life being terrible. I don't think two days is terrible at all. I am simply stating the fact that it's even better using 3G, and from some experience the gain will be noticeable.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I can type "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" without looking, with only the word jumped (turned into junkie by autocorrect) needing fixing.
It's amazing what autocorrect will tell you about a person.
The endpoint of that trend seems to be a full-fleged Asimovian robot.
Somewhere along the way, it matches - and then surpasses - tricorder's base capabilities. Most of those could have been just the hyperspace internet quantum cloud query continuum engine, of course. It gives you the reading you should have asked for. Not really local sensing and processing, though.
It's LTE so it should theoretically be global. Slide-out keyboard and all the other bells and whistles...1.2GHz dual-core A9, 1GB RAM, microSD slot. Slightly lower-res screen (4" 960x540, still entirely reasonable) but other than that it's entirely adequate. Runs 4.1 stock, I'm sure Cyanogen or AOSP is up to date though.
Specs
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Given that everyone in first world is going fat and getting the diabetes, a smart phone able to measure blood glucose level could have some success.
Little projectors that can put data and content on any surface.
I've been waiting for TV tuners, but I suppose this would cut down on bandwidth which would reduce profits...
Ads that report your pulse rate to google, the function being bloatware baked into the OS you cannot be sure to get rid of.
A few years ago a similar story was posted and i said wearable electronics (both glasses and watches) nice to see i was right. As my previous comment is only just coming to pass now, I'll add to it with tactile touchscreens (tactus is working on this by injecting fluid into bubbles just above the touchscreen http://www.asme.org/kb/news---articles/articles/fluids-engineering/fluid-systems-take-on-touchscreens), and also flexible screens (samsung, nokia, sharp, lg all are working on this) for phones that can be wrapped around your wrist and thrown like you stole it. We will also see mobile devices taking on the pc in some areas with a bunch of docks and dummy devices. One more thing, and i might get some grief over this, is if intel can get there act together, x86 mobile would have a lot of advantages.
Rocket Surgeon.
Characterizing RIM devices as durable is a laugh. I worked at a company where people broke them routinely without even trying.
A friend went through them like candy; that stupid rollerball would break all the time.
RIM *has* been sunk because the smartphone industry was revolutionized by the iOS and Android platforms; RIM's devices were pathetically unfeatured. The writing was on the wall that it was only a matter of time before iOS and Android offered the same security features as RIM, and RIM were idiots for not reading that writing - or not doing anything about it.
Please help metamoderate.
oh oh oh, if you want the next must have sensor innovation, put a brain wave sensor in there. That way it can graph all the different stages of sleep (3Xnrem stages, 1X rem), then it can wake you up at the opportune moment (if you get woken up half way through a stage especially rem you can feel tired all day; some times less sleep is better).
Rocket Surgeon.
Panasonic has already sold an Android smartphone in Japan with a radiation detector. As far as I know it wasn't a huge success, commercially...
I just need to put my finger on the backside camera, the phone lights up the flash led and light shines through my finger and reflects back into the camera. In a few seconds I get the pulse reading. ("Heart Rate" App)
I could also meditate with such an app - it measures the difference between the pulse when I inhale and when I exhale, and this correlates with relaxation. I get a feedback how well I am doing. ("Stress Doctor" App)
Okay, I'll bite and you can mod me down as a troll if you want. I expect less and less from future smartphones because while the newest one I own is a hell of a lot faster and more usable than my older ones it lacks the ability to tinker with the hardware and is sorely lacking in comparison. My Neo FreeRunner while slow and rather quirky has a lot of features you will never see again like a breakout board available for free as well as some pretty sweet options for adding in your own hardware if so inclined. My N900 which recently had it's usb charging port separated from the breadboard is more feature rich than the the nexus 4 that replaced it. The N900 had a decent UI as well as perks like an IR port which allowed me to control various things like TV sets and radios it also let me broadcast audio over the FM band. You will never see any offerings like them again and you can pry both of them from my cold dead hands before I give them up.
I'm not sure the phone is the right platform for a heart rate monitor. A heart rate monitor would do more good if it could detect your heart rate 24/7, or at least during the whole day. I guess maybe smart clocks that Apple and Samsung are working on will probably have that feature.
Yeah, stereo mic is kind of a no brainer.
Radar may be possible, but I highly doubt you'll be able to see through walls with a sensor that tiny.
Why would you want a laser for medium range distance if you have a radar?
Thermal imaging sensors are dropping in price, so that's probably going to become a no-brainer at some point. Those will be great for parents who want to check if their kid has a temperature (spelling the end for the old thermometer under warm tap water trick, sorry kids...) and great for looking for heat leaks and water leaks in your home.
- A good (near-medical quality) heartrate monitor is doable right now, but would benefit from better color detection in the camera and for Android, a better API. It only works on iPads right now.
I got an app called "instant heart rate" on my Lumia 920. It's free but does appear to work pretty well, and it's easy to use.
According to the website (www.azumio.com) it's also on iOS devices. Don't know if it's near medical quality though.
Actually, myself and a team of experts have been working to find the next thing and have arrived at a product. Yo Mama, will soon be available on both iOS and android markets.
Haptic display by Senseq.
A friend of mine told me about an idea he had for making an app which uses the screens pressure sensor to weigh things, ie. you put something on the phone and it says 8.5g or whatever you are trying to measure. I don't know if this is possible with todays sensors but it would be a interesting feature to have.
must be the next step for smartphones, as an alternative to voice based UI, unfortunately it will not be "innovation" since the concept is well known. It will need 3D glasses for privacy but it will also make it simpler to implement.
Next year will be year of teh dumbphones.
Korma: Good
At some point people might prefer two of these gloves and a trackpad to regular key board and mouse for desktops.
Patent trolls, this is prior art if someone has not already patented this.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
a built in phaser
but muscle memory about where the keys are. Which works fine on a touch screen
Wow, you're very talented to have such precise proprioception. Do you play any instruments?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I would simply have it administer a lethal dose of cyanide any time the user posts something stupid on the internets ;-)
Wow, you're very talented to have such precise proprioception.
Ha Ha.
Actually I'm not. When you are touch typing on a keyboard are you feeling the keys like Hellen Keller looking for a pair of dropped eyeglasses? Of course not. Your fingers go where the keys are because you have trained your muscles where they are.
The same principal holds on a smaller virtual keyboard. The edges of the screen are close enough that your thumbs can easily remember over time where the keys are. Combine that with autocorrect that adjusts for small variances in position and you can type pretty well without looking much.
This is not a specialized skill, it's what naturally happens to ANYONE who spends a lot of time typing with any device.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Would enable apps that may independently verify that it truly was the dog that farted.
The article referenced mentions "eye-tracking sensors" and suggests they could be used for improving gaming. They could also be used for recording which parts of every page you find interesting and sending those records to advertisers. With that information they can construct ads on the fly to better suit your preferences and sell those preferences to others, A profile could be built of the target that would be more accurate than his view of himself. Security services would demand all this information as well. You'd have a super drone in your hand watching what catches your eye from moment to moment. They'd know what turns you on.
I'd love to see a smartphone for sale in a store with a slide-away QWERTY keyboard - that would be really kool.
With devices like Google Glass we will move away from touch screens as the primary input and output mechanism. A head mounted device will let us use a combination of inputs like voice, laser keyboard, and eye movements as well as brain and muscle electrical impulses to control output on the head mounted device and other displays, like a computer monitor, a TV, or a flexible screen that we can easily carry in a pocket or purse and pull out to view content and media on a larger display.
We will also experience fewer but better integrated applications that require less manual input. A futuristic health application would monitor all our activity and physiology. With a combination of store maps and product nutritional information, it would enable us to quickly find those food products that fit our preferred nutritional profile, like products that contain less that 5% sugar per serving. Over a period of time we would get a better idea of the calories we take in and burn, as well as the nutritional value of the food we consume.
...for the ability to punch someone in the face over the internet.
How about starting with lowering the phones prices & a better battery..
My Palm Centro must be six yrs old now. It has a 32GB memory card in it (Same capacity as the new Blackberry Z10!) and I've replaced the battery twice. It has been a wonderful workhorse and I can actually fit it in my pocket. I'm looking for a new smartphone now, but NOT one with a soldered-in memory chip or battery. Too bad Palm/HP self destructed. On the brighter side, now more guys are being motivated to buy purses in which to carry their 5" phones. This should be a boon both to the fashion industry and purse snatchers everywhere.