Smartphone innovation:
Where we're going next (Smartphones Unlocked)
Smartphone advancements
are on the edge of transforming in some crazy ways, but it isn't like you
think.
April 13,
2013 9:00 AM PDT
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HTC's One lead the way with a TV-controlling IR blaster built into
the power button.
(Credit: CNET)
The HTC One has a gorgeous chassis and a ton of
camera tricks, the Samsung's Galaxy S4 pauses and unpauses video when you
avert your gaze, and in the Lumia 920,
Nokia was one of the first to introduce wireless charging and an ultrasensitive
screen you can control while wearing gloves.
Yet
compared with the real meat of what you do with a phone -- things like
communicating with people, browsing the Internet, snapping photos, and playing
games -- today's top phones are mostly all on par.
Software
and hardware extras that extend beyond the basics, while impressive,
convenient, likable, and even useful, still amount to fancy filler.
All
of today's technology will certainly improve: cameras will get sharper and clearer,
processors faster, screens stronger, and batteries longer-lived. But in tomorrow's tech world, that
"filler" may be the more compelling story.
With
his shaggy, sandy blond hair and a 5-o'clock shadow, Mark Rolston, the creative
director for Frog Design, has studied technology for the better part of two
decades. As he sees it, smartphones are just about out of evolutionary
advances. Sure, form factors and materials might alter as manufacturers grasp
for differentiating design, but in terms of innovative leaps, Rolston says,
"we're at the end of gross innovation for smartphones."
That
isn't to say smartphones are dead or obsolete. Just the contrary. As Rolston
and other future thinkers who study the mobile space conclude, smartphones will
become increasingly impactful in interacting with our surrounding world, but
more as one smaller piece of a much large, interconnected puzzle abuzz with
data transfer and information.
We'll
certainly see more crazy camera software and NFC features everywhere, but there's
much, much more to look forward to besides.
You
may have never given two thoughts to the sensors that come on you smartphone.
They don't mind. They're still there anyway, computing data on your phone's
movement and speed, rotation, and lighting conditions.
These
under-appreciated components -- the gyroscope, accelerometer, magnetometer, and
so forth -- are starting to get more friends in the neighborhood. Samsung, for
instance, slipped pressure, temperature, and humidity sniffers into the Galaxy S4.
They
may not be the sexiest feature in your phone, but in the future, sensors like
accelerometers will be able to collect and report much more detailed
information.
Imagine
an air quality sensor on a smartphone suggests David Harris, social change
agent at Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Calif. Much like the Waze app crowdsources
city maps and traffic conditions, sensors like the one Harris proposes could
collect incredibly useful data about air quality around the world. That, in
turn, could be used to monitor global climate change, or perhaps pollutants or
allergens, through a network of smartphones.
Down
the street at Ideo, Dave Blakely, the
senior director of technology strategy, agrees. "The desire for the
quantification of environmental factors is a big one," he said.
In
addition to air quality, temperature and speed of movement are also biggies.
Blakely also sees a future where electrical and health sensors built into the
smartphone can track your pulse, or even double as an EKG, turning the everyday
smartphone into a medical device.
'Appcessories'
An
extension of the smartphone as medical device is what Ideo's Blakely terms
"appcessories," a set of highly specialized peripheral software that
fulfills very targeted needs, stuff that most people wouldn't want their
everyday phone.
Let's
say you've downloaded an art app that maps out a paint-by-numbers schematic of
your favorite Picasso. Now let's say you've bought an after-market appcessory,
a tiny pico projector with an NFC chip installed that, when you slip it onto
the phone, beams out the image onto your surface so that you can get to work on
your painting, or vegetable garden planting, or DIY home project.
Rise of gestures and touch-free input
Casting
a sidelong glance to pause a video and bringing your finger to pursed lips might make you snigger, but gestures
and other nontap inputs are on the rise.
For
years, smartphones have included some sort of indirect input, like silencing
sound when you flip the phone over, or dialing with your voice. Taken in a
wider context, gestures and voice comprise a wider world of multimodal input --
basically, anything that isn't your finger tapping at buttons on the screen.
Gestures
and voice may be starting the trend, but other, more sophisticated transitions
and input methods will soon move from wacky option to normal ways of
interacting with devices. For instance, calling up the Galaxy S4's S Voice Drive app already assumes you'll be speaking
instructions rather than typing. On a drawing program, using your finger or a
stylus may be the best way to go about.
What
if launching a game automatically activated eye-tracking sensors for enhanced
play, and what if tapping the phone to an NFC receiver on your car turned on motion control that let you
mute or amplify volume on a phone call or the radio with a wave of your hand?
Then
there will be the apps or tasks that will seamlessly switch from manual to
voice to text to gesture-based inputs depending on what the app is and what
you're doing. Let's say you launch a fitness app by tapping. When it senses
motion, it switches to voice commands. At the end of the exercise when you're
weak and uncoordinated, you could wave your hand above the screen to drill down
into stats.
What
if, in order to authorize a payment, you've set up your phone to bump the
device against a surface while simultaneously giving a voice command?
In
addition to gestures we already know about, like bumping and waving, companies
are hard at work adding tracing and body movement to the mix. There's Microsoft Kinect, of course, a gaming console that uses your
moving body as the controller. In a more limited vein, Samsung has extended its
software for recognizing a hovering stylus, to the human finger. On devices
like the Galaxy S4, you can now point your finger right above the screen to
preview a browser tab, photo, or video.
Leap Motion is another company working with
gestures this way. The standalone sensor, imagined for use with a large screen
monitor or TV, responds when you pinch your fingers for a zoom, point, draw, or
trace. This is the kind of sensor that could easily find its way into a
smartphone or tablet. (Click
the link above to watch the YouTube video demo. The Leap box comes out next
month.)
The larger ecosystem
If
you've made it here, you'll start seeing a general theme: in the
forward-looking smartphone environment of our future, our devices are anything
but isolated.
Instead,
smartphones will come with more components and communications tools to interact
more than ever before with people and other devices. We already see some
communication with Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth, and NFC communications protocols,
plus newcomers like the Miracast standard.
In
short, the kind of innovation we see in the mobile space may have more to do
with getting your smartphone to communicate with other computing devices in the
ecosystem than it will have with how many megapixels or ultrapixels your camera
lens possesses or what kind of leather was used to finish the chassis.
You can already use embedded sensors like the Galaxy S4's IR
blaster to change the channel. How about meet your next boss or future spouse? (Credit: CNET)
Smartphones
of the future could use sensors and machine language to recognize other objects
around them.
What
if leaving your phone in the car for 5 hours triggers a reaction where the
phone calls or e-mails to tell you where it is? When someone places his handset
on the table too close to yours, it might buzz and flash red, because you've
set preferences for it to do so.
As
we're sitting on orange and gray chairs in CNET's spacious coffee shop/break
room, Mark Rolston, Frog Design's creative director, paints a compelling
picture of smartphones acting as social tools in the real world.
Let's
say you're in a bar or at a conference and you want to meet people, he says.
Extremely precise sensors track exactly where you are indoors. Point the phone
toward a person in the crowd and her pertinent information pops onto the screen:
who she is, what she does, and maybe some background.
You're
now using your phone as a social tool in the real world, not just on a social
network, and none of the information you're broadcasting is creepy because
you've gone through preferences and told your phone exactly what it can share
or not. When you approach someone, the basics are worked out and you can get to
the business of having a conversation.
Wearable tech and you
Into
the coffee shop of tomorrow walks a techie of tomorrow.
He
or she is decked out in wearable tech from head to toe -- the Bluetooth earring
or ear cuff tucked into a lobe; Google glasses beaming up maps and directions;
a smartwatch that takes your vitals, deals with mobile payments, and serves as
a console for the most important functions. Then there's the smartphone slipped
into the pocket for more complicated tasks or to serve as a "big"
screen, and the smart shoes that calculate distance, underfoot conditions, and
analyze your gait.
Your
smartphone is still there, still essential for communicating with your
environment, but it becomes only one device in a collection of other, even more
personal or convenient gadgets, that solve some of the same sorts of problems
in different or complimentary ways.
The
scenario above isn't all that outlandish, especially given the rise of smartwatches, which still have a ways to go before
becoming truly well-rounded devices.
Crazy
tech that interacts with your body has been in development for some time. To
illustrate the point, Frog's Rolston brought a pair of Necomimi Brainwave Cat
Ears to our interview. The fuzzy "ears," which have been on sale for
about two years, sit atop a headband. A sensor protrudes from the band onto
your forehead and a dangling clip closes the circuit when you attach it to your
earlobe.
The
cat ears swivel and twitch in concert with your brain waves, a bizarre and
surprisingly giddy sensation. Necomimi's contraption isn't particularly useful
or flattering, but its brain-reading sensors underscore the kind of close,
personal interaction that can occur when tech "talks." Paired with a
smartphone app, what could this contraption share about our brains when we wake
or sleep?
Pair
a hair piece with a glittery app-controlled LED display and you have a
futuristic barrette that lights you up like Christmas.
The
point is this: smartphones aren't going anywhere. But instead of a focusing on
the world within the phone's screen, the smartphone will be tuned more than
ever before to the world around you.
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