After a decade of innovation and creativity, has the evolution of the smartphone finally come to an end?
A number of industry experts are concerned that future breakthroughs in smartphone technology may be being stymied by the practical limits of what’s possible with current hardware in terms of screen size and battery life, the Daily Mail reports.
Christian Lindholm, inventor of the easy text-messaging keyboards in old Nokia phones has claimed that this ‘wall’ is slowing down the phone’s evolution.
He said:
Everything in the phone industry now is incremental: slightly faster, slightly bigger, slightly more storage or better resolution.
This is putting pressure on developers including Apple, Google, and Microsoft to come up with new phone functions to ‘stand out’ from the crowd.
Some firms have even begun to experiment with new ways to help users interact with the wider world through touch, sight and sound.
This includes voice-activated personal assistant devices which will dangle from ‘smart jewellery’ necklaces with tiny embedded microphones or tiny earpieces that will obey our spoken commands.
Currently the world’s biggest tech companies have made real progress in this area with Google Now, Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana and Amazon.com’s Alexa all being able to read texts or emails for users, answer practical questions and handle other basic instructions.
Independent financial analyst Richard Windsor said: “The way the whole thing is evolving, the device itself is becoming just another way to provide access to a user’s digital life.”
Meanwhile Lindholm, who now runs KoruLab developers of compact, ultra-efficient software for running wearable devices sees a division coming.
He believes that smartphone functions will split into two camps, big-screen devices for rich entertainment and smaller wearable devices for other activities like keeping up with calendar, messaging and fitness.
Whatever happens we can be certain that developers will need to resolve the problem of poor battery life especially if they want their new features to work…
More of a concept than a journalist, Tom Percival was forged in the bowels of Salford University from which he emerged grasping a Masters in journalism.
Since then his rise has been described by himself as ‘meteoric’ rising to the esteemed rank of Social Editor at UNILAD as well as working at the BBC, Manchester Evening News, and ITV.
He credits his success to three core techniques, name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake.