Submitted by OddCardiologist9900 t3_122iarg in Futurology
Will it be more like an all-in-one phone or more like a dumbphone?
All-in-one mobile phone, for example, a smart phone is equipped with thermal imaging and night vision goggles at the same time, or you can add corresponding functions according to your needs. On the other hand, smartphones have changed our lives, both good and bad. In order to live a simpler and more focused life, will dumbphones be better?
How far into the future are we talking? I think the most likely scenario is that eventually phones will be connected to our brains via implants, but before that people will be wearing contacts with heads up displays and/or earpieces.
You'll be able to control your phone via voice or via gestures (the contacts will come equipped with a built in camera or we'll see something like soli in the pixel phones where the gestures are read via something similar to radar), but eventually they'll be telepathically controlled (this will either require an implant or the user to wear a headband [possibly a smaller circular monitor that afixes to the head with adhesive] of some sorts, so it probably won't catch on for a lot of people until implants are more common).
Consumer phones won't need hardware features like thermal imaging or night vision, so they'll just gradually shrink until the main computing device fits on your wrist like a pip boy. They may or may not have an actual display (I'm sure the earlier models will look a lot like smart watches).
Then there's the Black Mirror corneal transplant. Those might make more sense than a brain transplant for a lot of people (do we want to open our brains directly to the internet?).
I think we've reached the limit of simplicity when it comes to phones. Phones haven't changed in appearance compared to 5 to 7 years ago.
Compare the telephone that looks like this ☎️ to what you have in your hand right now and you can see that we can't really get any more simpler.
Brain implants imo are stupid and will never happen. To me, they're in same realm as flying cars.
What makes more sense is AR. Glasses are cool but AR without glasses is even more minimalist than glasses and a phone. Having a whole "smart environment" is imo the next step. Being able to cast a small personal interface in front of you using a simple gesture would remove the need to carry around any kind of physical device.
I really think going deviceless is the only way we can get any simpler. The problem is how we integrate these smart environments and make it so the user can have their own personal interface that stores their data in a room with over a thousand people interacting with it.
I think solid state battery could change everything. It means the phones will be way, way thin and maybe completely portless.
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Phones would most likely give up ports before than. Phones like the Meizu Zero already made a portless phone in 2017. Qi2 Wireless charging with magsafe gives us a glimpse of portless phones already.
It won’t look like anything. Integrated implants. Resistance is futile.
I think next up will be AR glasses. I have used Alexa frames for years and they talking on the phone so easy and listening to audio books/ music more enjoyable than head phones. Adding in a screen for the visual part of using a smart phone probably paired with a glove to read hand motions. I don't want more integration than that, since I always want the ability to take it off and go away.
I very much hope we can do away with laptops and PCs and just dock our phones into stations with screen/mouse/keyboard.
Holographic screens that project into the air. You’ll wear them like a watch with wireless headphones for audio (unless you have audio implants of course)
That would be so stupid, a big screen that’s floating in the air
Why not a tiny screen inside your eyeball?
Doesn’t have to be a big screen. Size of your palm would be enough for a phone. Google search it, the concept has been envisioned for years.
Screen inside your eye i’m sure will be possible in the not too distant future, it’s effectively how they’re working on blindness cures. But it’s not the question of today about mobile phones.
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Fancy watches will be the 'underground' versions, for miscreants who dare not allow being tracked via an implanted commo device.
As a person who regularly follows phone news I agree with u/Evcher , traditional slab smartphones have hit a plateau and will probably not progress further outside of processor, camera and battery improvements on a more marginal basis.
Foldable phones do seem like they are improving and a lot of manufacturers are starting to make them. This will most likely bring down the price as we have started to see with brands like Techno releasing a cheaper galaxy fold style phone. We may see companies release trifolds once foldables get thinner.
Outside of that unless technology improves massively I don't think we will ever see wearable ar glasses, Google glass just failed again. Nor do we have anywhere near the technology or the political will to start putting chips in people's brains. Overall I expect to see more marginal updates year over year that add up in the long run.
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It'll be hardwired into the brain and be so well integrated that using it will be second nature.
We will need paid subscriptions to thought-transference sevices. Every stray thought and daydream could be billed. Stop thinking and save money, hey?
Just think of the remake of Total Recall. Totally implanted, protected on any glass surface, or a hologram.
Also, think of Matrix, the human body is a power supply already....
Stickers. You stick a thin something on your skin and it works. Stick another sticker behind your ear for audio. I don't know how you do the visual screen, though. Maybe a sticker on the upper part of your nose that projects to your eye? Or just have a physical screen you can hold like phones now or on the wrist.
It will look and be smarter and will either be on your wrist / forearm or lanyard around your neck.
I'm thinking something like Ghost in the Shell were you have a cyberbrain or at the very least, some form of neural implant and I can finally do away with a flimsy piece of metal/plastic.
People say it will be implants etc but what is with the camera? That’s one of the most used feature and an eye camera is very restrictive.
People make selfies and use the arm to change the angle and distance of the camera.
Maybe in the future we will have a bracelet camera we can detach.
>What will the mobile phone of the future look like?
Pessimistic guess: a lot like current spyphones but opting out of them means opting out of 99.9% of civilization. Also they'll be so subtle (like built into your body) that large sections of society won't know they're even a thing thus leaving them powerless to resist.
Optimistic guess: same, but AI displaces our human overlords and treats us better than they do.
Near-term, probably glasses once they become practical. Long-term it'll be an implant.
MrEloi t1_jdrnyy7 wrote
They will be bean cans connected by long pieces of taut string, between the rubble mounds, as the SkyNet robots stomp overhead, their lasers flashing at any human target they see in the ruins.