Experts Told About The Future Of Smartphones

The smartphone market is gradually filled with devices with bendable displays that fold or unfold. Samsung, one of the leaders in the development of such solutions, said it plans to develop movable screen technology in the future. TCL and LG are also working on phones with twistable displays.

However, according to Forbes, the smartphones of the future will not need such options.

Usually, when it comes to futuristic phones, people immediately imagine transparent displays that familiarly interact with them. They can often be seen in science fiction. This is indeed the most likely scenario for the industry, the publication writes.

AR [augmented reality] technology could serve as the basis for creating transparent smartphones. However, there are complications here.

For example, manufacturers will have to puzzle how to get AR out of VR [virtual reality]. If they can do that, then the display will track the user’s fingers’ movement and respond to them as if they were touched. Especially since there have long been similar devices on the market, such as the Xbox Kinect controller.

According to some experts in technology, the smartphone revolution is already close, but the way of interaction may be different. For example, they are sure that there will be a device put on the eye like an ophthalmic lens in the future.

“It’s hard to say exactly what type of ‘phone’ will emerge if we rely on AR. We have to prepare for devices as we know them to cease to exist. So we should expect something completely different from what we use today; potentially advanced glasses or contact lenses, all with an emphasis on apps that use cameras,” Banuba Managing Director Vadim Nehai said in 2019.

Motorola vice president of global products Dan Deri believes the form factor will be a key focus of the mobile industry in the near future.

“There are a number of new concepts emerging right now related to display innovation, such as stretchable or twistable screens. There are other aspects to look at as well. For example, right now the possibilities are limited by the size of the screen, and all we can do is make the phone as big as possible. So we will look for ways to go beyond the limitations of the display in the future. And finding ways to overcome that limitation will be a key challenge,” Deri explained.

According to him, flexible phone displays, which every other company is now trying to create, are part of the research into new form factors that meet consumer demands.

“For example, we saw a customer need for a more compact form factor, and foldable screens allowed us to meet it,” the expert added.

Danila Borunov, IT director of the Fresh Auto chain of car dealerships, believes that smartphones should become part of the human ecosystem, replacing passports, certificates, and other documents.

“The screen is the interface of user interaction with the device, the more convenient it is, the better. I think the most logical outcome of the smartphone is that as an object it will disappear and live together with our body,” Borunov reasoned.

Today, most companies see the “way out” not in the smartphones themselves but in additional gadgets to them, such as virtual reality glasses.

“I think sooner or later we will see transparent screens, but it will not be a smartphone, but something else, most likely, it will just be a screen,” — said the expert.

In his opinion, there is no point in wasting energy on pivoting screens, as it is not ergonomically correct and there is no need for customers to do so. Most companies are investing in it just to show their technology, demonstrate that they have sufficient expertise, and master this direction.

“In the near future, smartphones will be revolutionized in terms of autonomy. The operating time will increase dramatically, there will be fast wireless charging of batteries. In addition, batteries will become more compact. In accordance with this, the size of smartphones may also change — they will cease to be “shovels”.

Smartphones will become smaller, so that they are easier to hold in the hand.

Now one of the reasons for the large size of phones is the placement of large battery cells in the body,” said Oleg Kivokurtsev, co-founder and development director of Promobot.

Also, according to the expert, the changes will affect the cameras, the producers will start using new sensors and new technologies to improve the quality of photos. In addition, the shelves can get production models of smartphones without connectors and physical buttons in the near future.

“We have seen many market leaders abandon the headphone jack in favor of wireless headsets, almost all flagships today support wireless charging. Prototypes of devices without jacks have already been presented,” Kivokurtsev said.

The expert is sure that the concept of flexible screens has no clear practical value. Now such technology came to this because of the large size of smartphones, to make the device more compact in “folded” form, but there is no clear answer to the question “why they are needed”.

“The distant future of smartphones will involve wearable devices. Already, this market is growing rapidly, despite its limited functionality. Cell phones have already gone this way, evolving in 25 years from suitcases to watches or iPhones. Electronics are becoming more and more compact, and this is just the beginning,” said Vasily Pitelinsky, marketing director of Forward Leasing.

The most popular technology for content consumption and interaction with a smartphone today is the display, the expert said.

Twisting and folding representatives of it is an attempt by manufacturers to make a more functional device in a compact body, and consumers, despite the high cost, willingly buy up such smartphones. By releasing such new products, manufacturers are testing demand and technology, which allows the industry as a whole to develop, continued Pitelinsky.

“Leading manufacturers are also actively developing and improving AR technologies that are already helping people at work. In my opinion, the next step in the development of visual content will be exactly augmented reality glasses. We have to wait until the manufacturers are ready to combine in an ultra-compact body the processing, telecommunications and power for them, so that AR-technology can work the same way as on a smartphone. For now, all that remains is to play with the geometry of the displays to improve the user experience of interacting with the virtual world,” concluded the expert.