Advances to make smartphones exciting again
What will it take to get you jazzed about smartphones again?
The industry appears mostly stuck in neutral, as was evident at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Spain. There was a metoo-ness to most of the handsets on display, and it’s been this way for a while. Can you spell I-NC-R-E-M-E-N-T-A-L?
It was equally telling that one of the biggest stories to come out of MWC was about the relaunch of the Nokia 3310, a cheap compact throwback phone that debuted around the turn of century. It isn’t even slated for the U.S. market.
Nor did it help that the two most high-profile players on the global smartphone stage, Apple and Samsung, are holding their next big devices for another day — the latter’s Galaxy S8 is slated to be unveiled this month, with the 10th anniversary iPhone most likely arriving in September.
There’s another key factor in play though: The phone in your pocket is already pretty darn capable, which is why so many of you are hanging onto devices that much longer.
Of course, it’s not like there’s been zero progress of late. Numerous handsets boast superior screens, improved cameras, zippier processors, fast wireless charging and batteries that squeeze out a little extra juice. We shouldn’t minimize this. Even modestly priced devices can typically deliver more than we ask of them.
While there may be an innovation hiatus, “let’s not forget this is still a 1.5 billion-unit market — it’s the most prolific consumer electronics device on the planet, it’s a multibillion business,” said Ben Wood, chief of research at CCS Insight in the U.K. “Only a foolhardy person would write it off.”
Google’s Hiroshi Lockheimer certainly isn’t writing it off. “What you can do with your phone continues to evolve, because it’s not just the hardware, it’s the software on top and the services,” Lockheimer said. You expect him to say such a thing as the Google executive in charge of Android, Chrome OS and Google Play.
But Lockheimer is right on, of course. We increasingly rely on the phones to entertain us, shoot pictures and videos, pay for stuff at retail, even make the occasional call.
So what might get you excited again? Here’s what to keep your eyes and ears on:
Voice. Obviously, this rodeo has begun. The spread of voice capable AI-infused digital assistants represents one key driver to where innovation is going. Google has now unleashed the constantly improving Google Assistant across the Android ecosystem, not just on the company’s own Pixel phones.
Amazon’s Alexa is just starting to make it onto handsets, the first being the Mate 9 from China’s Huawei.
Google and Amazon are only pressuring Siri — a longtime presence on the iPhone — to improve. And let’s not discount another veteran voice, Cortana from Microsoft.
Such assistants may soon be joined by another vocal newbie: If the rumors prove to be true, Samsung’s Galaxy S8 will feature a smart, loquacious assistant named Bixby, perhaps based in part on AI technology from Viv Labs, a company Samsung bought last year from the humans behind Siri.
Displays. We’ve seen how Samsung has pushed curved screens through recent iterations of its Sseries flagship devices, not to mention on the illfated Note 7, and use those edge displays to surface additional information.
The LG G6 flagship that was unveiled in Barcelona is almost all screen, given its extremely thin bezels. LG is also relying on an unconventional 18:9 screen ratio (as compared to the more typical 16:9) to help fit a larger display onto a smaller form factor. In any case, going bezel-less (or at least bezel-lite) may become the new normal. Rumors are we’ll see something similar on the Galaxy S8.
The next iPhone may also be near edge-to-edge, perhaps with a Touch ID fingerprint sensor and home button embedded directly into what may be a flexible OLED display.
Augmented reality. There’s also a great deal of speculation that the new iPhone will be ready for some form of augmented reality, and possibly through 3D camera technology, facial recognition.
CEO Tim Cook hasn’t been shy about Apple’s interest in AR, and analyst Gene Munster of Loup Ventures recently speculated that if the next iPhone integrates a dedicated 3D mapping chip as expected, it could be the first AR hardware to gain mass adoption, which he defines as selling more than 100 million units in a year.
It’s still very early days for Google’s Project Tango, though partner Lenovo introduced the Phab 2 Pro based on this AR-based technology — you look through the screen to see objects overlaid on top of the real world — last August. Tango employs computer vision to help devices understand their position relative to their physical surroundings.
Asus has showcased a second Tango phone called Zenfone AR, which is also compatible with Google’s Daydream virtual reality headset, a rival to Samsung’s Gear VR.
Indeed, virtual reality is already happening, at least when you pair a compatible phone with a Daydream or Gear VR.
Is a 3-D hologram phone far behind?
Going modular. LG has already backed off an area it pushed hard a year ago, notably a modular approach to phone design. At the push of a button, G5 owners were able to slide modular components onto the phone to supply a better camera or superior speaker. It was apparently a bust; the new G6 doesn’t accommodate such modules.
More bad news for the modular approach? Late last summer, Google shelved its own Project Ara modular phone project, at least for now, with no such phones ever making it to market.