Any time we’re given a glimpse of future technology it seems awesome and unreasonably far away. Like flying cars. We’ve been promised those since the 50’s. But with cell phones the future is closer than ever because unlike flying cars, you can’t have amid air collision with a cell phone so it’s easier to work out the bugs. With that in mind, let’s have a look at the innovations that are right around the corner to make your Twitter updates easier than ever.
1. Super Fast Charge
What’s the most annoying aspect of any phone currently on the market? If you guessed late night calls from drunken, depressed ex-girlfriends and/or grandma, you’re close, but not quite. It’s the god awful battery life and recharge time. Sure, they’ve made strides to ensure your phone battery lasts a few hours, but inevitably it will dwindle down and you’ll have to plug it in to charge for a couple of hours.
Thanks to insufferably smart MIT people who have been playing with lithium-ion technology, charge time in the future is likely going to be reduced to mere seconds. No kidding.
Apparently we’re living in the lithium-ion stone age right now, as current charging involves moving around those actual lithium ions like they’re elderly mall walkers. You can’t rush that, it just won’t work. But with some tinkering, the plan is to put super speedways inside the batteries that allow the ions to fly to where they need to be at high speeds. As an added bonus, the change in technology will significantly cut back on the recharge wear and tear that causes batteries to crap out over time.
Best of all, the technology isn’t really space age and new, it’s just a modification on existing technology, meaning they’re expecting it to be available fairly soon – like within the next couple of years.
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kit-eaton/technomix/invention-means-future-cellphones-charge-seconds
2. You Charge
If the concept of a 10 second battery charge is still too much of a burden for you to bear, then you’re going to want to make use of piezoelectric generators that are already being used in some phones. The generators are powered by kinetic energy, which means the more you use your phone, the more you charge your phone. If you’re a teenage girl with unlimited texting and a bit of technical know how, it’s possible you could use your phone to power your entire house. Maybe.
In any event, the upside of the kinetic energy power supply is that when you’re in a tight situation and your battery is just about to crap out on you, and you have no power outlet handy, you still don’t have to worry. On a place, on a highway when you’re out of gas or on a life raft after a fishing trip gone horribly wrong, you’ll always be able to send out at least one more message.
http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/04/16/kyocera-unveils-kinetic-flexible-oled-cell-phone/
3. Morphing
If battery life and charging is the biggest problem your cell phone faces today, the second biggest problem, at least for those of us who tend to break things a lot, is, you know, breaking it. Phones are tough, but every so often you accidentally drop one on the floor, or your dog tries to eat it, or someone sits on it while it’s open and then you’ve got some decorative, high-priced garbage sitting around.
The future is looking bright for the unsteady of hand, however, with some concept phones like the NEC tag phone from a couple of years back. Made of a rubber-like “shape memorizing” material, the tag is kind of like those view screens they pull out on sci-fi shows all the time now – it’s bendy, flexible technology. If you want to roll it up in a ball, you’re perfectly alright to do so. If you want to fold it and put it in your pocket like a wallet, that’ll work too.
Nokia is working on nanotechnology products to create the Morph phone – phones which can be disguised as just about anything, twisted and bent into different shapes, make use of nearly invisible technology so you can actually see through them, self-cleaning materials and solar technology.
4. Credit
You could argue that using credit to pay for things is a bit of a slippery slope for some folks and making it even easier to use credit could be bad news, but isn’t it kind of cool that you could use your phone as a payment method?
Already in trials for a couple of years now, and used regularly in Japan, the technology employs near-field communications, which is some fancy radio frequency technology that allows for a bit of two way communication between your phone and the contact point where you’re making your purchase.
The idea is to make your phone work kind of like a quick pass credit card, the kind where you don’t swipe, you just need to bring it close to a sensor. Your phone, which will now be linked to your bank or credit account, gets charged and you’re off and running. And because it’s two way communication, it offers added security – for instance you can take a moment to punch in a password or something, which will hopefully prevent folks from using your phone to fund a Vegas vacation or something like that.
So how long until your phone can buy you dinner? Once credit card companies and phone companies work out the kinks of who pays for what in getting the technology out there, it’s ready to go.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/business/25proto.html
5. Boarding Pass
Sure, most of us enjoy any extra hassles we can go through at airports, because flying is generally far too pleasant an experience these days. Still, some people are actually trying to make it even more convenient
Continental was the first airline to try out the entirely electronic boarding system, sending boarding passes to phones complete with a 2-D barcode that can be scanned to allow passengers on planes. The advantages here are that you don’t have to worry about printing your own boarding pass, losing your boarding pass and odds are if you forget everything, you’ll still have your phone so you won’t miss your flight. And the bar codes on cell phones are harder to forge than one dimensional bar codes on paper passes, so it sticks it to counterfeiters.
An added bonus to the paperless method is the ease with which the airlines can stop ruining your life. If the flight is overbooked, that can be worked out without you wasting time. If they have no more kosher meals, if you want to upgrade your seating or if they only have diet Tab cola, you can get in touch with one another with ease.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9896859-7.html
6. Point & Find
This technology is already in place with Nokia having various billboards in the UK that demonstrate the service, but it’s going to become more widespread and with greater purpose soon enough. In a nutshell, your phone is going to become insufferably smart and be capable of telling you about just about anything you point it at.
Using your phone, the plan is to simply point it at a building, a monument, even an advertisement or product in a store. The camera, GPS and a web connection do the rest as the service determines just what it is you’re looking at and then brings up relevant information. In store, the use of RFID tags, similar to the plan with credit cards, will allow you to scan products you’re interested in purchasing to find out price, what it’s made from, calories or anything else you could imagine as being useful.
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/5-future-cell-phones.htm
7. Silent Speech
The coolest thing you can ever have in your home is something that was designed by NASA, and soon you’ll be able to take another little piece with you wherever you go. Silent Speech technology is in the works for cell phones in the future, allowing users to ability to speak without actually making a sound.
The technology was designed for astronauts who needed to communicate but whose voices couldn’t be made out due to the background noise. The technology relies on the physical signs of speech, the movement of the throat and larynx, to determine what is being said. This in turn means you’ll be able to carry on conversations any place, any time without anyone hearing, which is perfect if you like to chat it up in libraries, church, or you just want to play spy for a while.
8. High Quality Images
Pretty much every camera today has a phone in it and pretty much every camera phone is useable for updating Facebook with pictures of drunks at a party but not much else. Even if you do have a 10 megapixel camera, the fact is the rest of the hardware isn’t present for you to take real, high quality images. For that, you’d need some impressive lens technology and that just isn’t going to fit on your phone.
Fortunately, Panoptes technology is on the way to change your camera phone into a tool for making art. The system will make use of many low resolution sensors to sort of knit a picture quilt but combining them all together to produce a high resolution image. Even more impressive is that the technology is smart enough to recognize areas of interest, so it will understand you want a picture of Uncle Frank and not the cat-scratched recliner behind him, and focus more on ensuring he looks clean and clear while eliminating noise typically found in low res images.
This is very awesome technology! Cant wait to see it come to the public.