The Future of Smart Phones

On April 3, 1973, Dr. Martin Cooper, a Motorola researcher and executive, made the first mobile telephone (Motorola DynaTAC) call to his rival (Dr. Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs). The prototype handheld phone used by Dr. Cooper weighed a staggering 1.1 kg (2.42 lb) and measured 23 cm long, 13 cm deep and 4.45 cm wide. The prototype offered a talk time of just 30 minutes and took 10 hours to re-charge and was priced at US $3995.

Since the first handheld phone, we have made mind-boggling progress in technology, making it possible for us to create smartphones that are thinner than a standard pencil, and has a computing power that can easily outperform an average laptop. With more than 4.6 billion unique mobile subscribers today, clearly smartphones have remained a very important part of our daily lives. More than a quarter of global Internet traffic now comes from smartphones.

The technological progress in smartphones has made it possible for developers to create apps and tools that gave consumers a choice. Actually, a vast amount of choice. As the number of choices increases, costs, in time and effort, for making a good choice also increases. Often, choice overloads exhaust us, make us unhappy and lead us to sometimes abscond from making a decision altogether. For example, for a photo editing job, there are now more than 1000 apps available on app stores for download. How do we select, which of these photo editing apps is the best fit for our photo editing job? We spend the time to do the research, check reviews, download the trial version or paid version and then learn to use an app. Each day, millions of hours and money get wasted all over the world just to find the right app.

Data shows that an average smartphone owner spends roughly 2 hours and 15 minutes a day using apps – the equivalent of one month a year. An average person has 60-90 apps installed on their phone, using around 30 of them each month and launching 9 per day. A report back in February 2017 said that an average U.S. iPhone user spent $40 on apps last year, downloading 33 new ones. An enormous amount of money is being wasted in marketing, just to convince a user to download, open and use an app. Most often the storage space on our mobile phones is largely occupied by the downloaded apps that we rarely use. Let us not forget that mobile manufacturers charge us premium while buying a mobile phone with higher storage capacity. Why should we pay for the mobile storage space just to keep downloaded apps? Can't the smartphone be smart enough to get our jobs done without needing us to go through all the hassle of finding out which of app and tool is best suitable for getting our job done? Ideally, the mobile app should not matter as long our jobs get done producing an output that matches our requirement. To address this, Google has started advocating progressive web apps that no longer require an app to be downloaded from app stores prior to its usage. A progressive web app can be directly accessed from a web browser. However, Google's progressive web apps, still don't address the "choice overload" issue. Companies that are into the smartphone-making business (whether hardware and/or software) must fundamentally re-think the way they address their customers' need.

Apart from many other limitations, another limitation of today's smartphone is its display. The experience of seeing Himalaya on a phone display (or even on Virtual Reality) doesn't match up with the experience of watching it in person. Furthermore, Virtual Reality technology isolates user's vision.

When we start asking the fundamental question: "Why do I need this tool or What problem does it solve?" then everything in between what we want from a tool and what the tool requires us to do is unnecessary. Such wastes can be avoided through fundamental problem-solving techniques, design ingenuity and technology break-through.

Looking at the trends and progress of various technologies, I can confidently predict that the future smartphones will no longer be in its current form i.e. a slab made of glass and metal, filled with silicon chipsets and batteries, and requires to be carried around.

In 6 to 10 years, the mobile phone will transform from its current avatar of being a just a handheld device to being a wearable device, very similar to what Magic Leap is experimenting now. Magic Leap uses mixed reality technology through a specially engineered glass, that completely changes the way we communicate and interact with our surroundings. More evolved than Google Glass, Magic Leap technology has tremendous possibilities. This technology will disrupt several industries. With Magic Leap technology, we may never require buying a television, a projector or even a laptop/desktop. The way we study and learn will fundamentally improve. Will we ever require a textbook or even attend a live classroom?

Silicon microprocessors have been at the heart of computing world for almost forty years. Computer chip makers are desperately moving fast to make the forthcoming microprocessors that will break down the computing speed records. In near future, the computing speed and shrinking limit of silicon microprocessors are bound to touch the limit. Now, chipmakers have found a new raw material in DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid), the crucial material our genes are made of, is being used to build the future generation of computers. DNA molecules, the material our genes are made of, have the potential to perform calculations many times faster than the world's most powerful human-built computers. Millions of natural supercomputers already exist inside living organisms, including our own body. The economic benefit of these biocomputers lies in this potential of all biologically derived systems to self-replicate and self-assemble under appropriate conditions. For instance, all of the necessary proteins for a certain biochemical pathway, which could be modified to serve as a biocomputer, could be synthesized many times over inside a biological cell from a single DNA molecule. This DNA molecule could then be replicated many times over. This characteristic of biological molecules could make the production of biocomputers highly efficient and relatively inexpensive. Whereas today's electronic computers require manual production, biocomputers could be produced in large quantities, even today from cultures, without any additional machinery needed to assemble them. Life forms could thrive in settings where silicon chips might melt, freeze, or disintegrate. For years now, scientists have been working to make cells into computers. It’s a logical goal. Cells store information in something roughly approximating memory, they behave due to the strict, rules-based expression of programming in response to stimuli, and cells can carry out operations with astonishing speed. Each cell contains enough physical complexity to theoretically be quite a powerful computing unit all on its own, and each is also small enough to pack by the millions into tiny physical spaces. With a fully realized ability to program cell behavior, as reliably as we do computer behavior, there’s no telling what biocomputing could accomplish. When each cell in our body become computers, it will not only replace the need for wearables but also will augment our capabilities in far greater ways and help us achieve superhuman feats. With the progress in bio-computing, neuro-computing, nano-biotechnology, molecular biology, artificial intelligence and deep learning, I would not be surprised if, in 20 years from now, we achieve a future where the computer and biology will merge to become one and not remain as separate entities. This future is inevitable. Therefore, in 20 years, the smartphones and mobile computing devices will evolve from wearables and will become a part of our biology. Several companies have already started researching and experimenting on how to best harness the power of biology. Facebook is already experimenting with “optical neuro-imaging system” that will enable users to type words directly from their brain, without the need to ever physically type out, at 100 words per minute which is five times the speed possible on today's smartphone. These initial experiments were just the beginning of our mind-reading efforts. If these experiments evolve successfully, then in 5-8 years, we will be able to communicate and share our thoughts removing the barriers of different languages.

With bio-computing, the biggest benefits could be in medicine, because cells are adept at interacting with other cells. It could one day be possible to use programmable bacteria, for example, to read aspects of human biochemistry in living patients, from within their bloodstream — certainly, that seems like a path with less inherent resistance than building micro-robots to accomplish the same thing—sense health problems in the human body and administer tailored therapies. A diseased cell is a program with a bug, computer scientists are good at finding bugs and fixing them. I leave the rest to your imagination. There’s really no telling what some visionary coder could do with algorithms designed to use billions of simple, networked computers (cells). Even if each of these living cell computers is relatively slow or limited, the technique could offer uniquely efficient ways to route millions of data packages around the globe with strong encryption.

The goal of every technology has always been to improve the quality of human life. Technology has already started becoming an integral part of our lives. As we go deeper into gaining an understanding of the fundamental laws and principles that govern nature, we gain the ability to harness nature's power in far more effective ways. After a billion years of evolution on this planet are we then turning into that same intelligent form that seeded us, on the cusp of preparing to perform the same experiment?

The author is an independent researcher, who tracks emerging technologies and its potential future applications. For any queries, message on LinkedIn or e-mail at harishdash@gmail.com.