High Tech Innovation

Most people use smartphones for listening to music, playing games, browsing the internet and social networking where phones were once primarily for making calls and texting.

Background

Over the last decade or so, people all around the world have been satisfying their computing needs and multimedia requirements through their desktops and laptops. But things are changing really fast with the introduction of smartphones and handheld devices a few years back.

More and more users are adopting these devices every day to perform further on the go and always stay connected. Technology giants are releasing newer and enhanced handheld devices every month to grab a slice of the market share thus creating endless choices for the end user. With loads of features and tonnes of applications to support them, these devices have established themselves as the mainstay of the technology market. There was a time when phones were only used for making calls. In fact, when mobile phones were invented, it was to address one specific function to make wireless calls wherever you are. With the evolution of mobile phones, more and more functions were added to it. 

So what are the most popular features of a smartphone?

1. Gaming

Surprisingly, when it comes to smartphone usage, gaming is more important than making calls. At one point phones just came with three or four pre-installed games. But with high memory storage and application stores one can download many exciting games which can keep them occupied for hours. These games are horribly addictive. Adventure, shooting, puzzles, name it, and the game is there on Apple iTunes or Google’s Play Store. In fact it has been predicted that full on gaming consoles like PlayStation or Xbox shall be niche market devices with most gaming done on smartphones.

2. Music

Over the years, music has always been a stress reliever for many. Now is no different. We live in a world where tension and stress are inevitably a part of our lives. There isn’t an instant when we don’t want to listen to music, going home, in the traffic, at home, in the kitchen and in fact there are people who take their phones in when they are having a bath and play music, some people play music on their phones and sleep.
While working many people plug on their phones and work with music. With the dawn of mp3s, personalisation of music became very prominent where it is very common to see people having a collection of music they like. Naturally, the next best thing we would all want to do with a smartphone is listen to music.

3. Social Networking

In today’s highly connective world social networking sites are the first place we reveal things. Employed in a new company, just broke up, in a relationship, married and the philosophical quotes which are aimed at someone on your friend list, everything is up on Facebook.
Even before we sit down to start work in the morning, we have to check in, right before we leave work, lunch hour. Now that all the major phones are integrated with Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites we are constantly updating our status.

4. Browsing

With internet at our fingertips we can almost say bye to switching on your laptop and connecting to the web world. All we have to do now is open the browser on our phone, type in what we want and boom the results are there. The introduction of 4G has boosted the number of people who browse the internet using their smartphones.

What features are on the top of wish list for future smartphones?

1. Augmented Reality

The term augmented reality (AR) when used in the context of computer technology refers to what we perceive through our senses (usually sight) enhanced through the use of computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics and GPS data. Simply put, AR makes available more information for us users by combining computer data to what we see in real life. Using the camera on your phone, you can point it somewhere ‘live’ to get an information overlay of where you can find the nearest cafes or dining places.

2. Flexible Screens

It may soon be the case where smartphones are able provide a large screen to watch and play your favorite movies and games while maintaining a pocketable size. Screens can be folded and unfolded by implementing the Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) technology. This paper-thin screen can even project future features smart-phone/ from both sides of the screen, so you can show pictures or videos to your friend on one side while using the other as a control.

3. In-built Projector

With this feature smartphones can actually be turned into an interactive gaming consoles without a need for a TV screen; all you’ll need is a flat surface. Instead of a physical controller, you can use your body or your voice. A smart camera and a voice control function can capture your movements and voice commands to let you interact with objects and future features smart-phones/ on the projected screen.

4. Seamless Voice Control

Voice control has been receiving much attention since iPhone's Siri made headlines. Voice control has existed in many earlier mobile phones even though the voice recognition function was crude at best. Research has been made to advance the development of voice control, but it has proved to be a paramount task. Siri might have signalled a breakthrough to the way voice control and recognition programming ought to be made. Instead of recognising commands via sound waves like most voice-recognition systems, Siri interprets diction and syntax in a similar fashion to how we recognise speech.

5. 3-D Screens and Holograms

Mobile companies are now moving from 2D future features smart-phones/ to 3D future features smart-phones/ for the smartphone screen. At present, we have a couple of 3D smartphones in the market, such as the LG Optimus 3D, the Motorola MT810 as well as the very first Samsung AMOLED 3D. Well, the next path could possibly be holographic projections. In essence, holographic projections will mean a combination of 3D future features smart-phones/ and projections from the smartphone. 3D displays can be integrated with elements of movements when it comes to user interactions with the phone. For example, you can resize your photos by using your hands to ‘pull’ or ‘compress’ the holographic photos that appear in front of you, move objects by ‘grabbing’ them from one place to another, etc.