Predicting future tech innovations

Medium

It is easy to see that smartphones have come a long way in terms of innovation from the first phones with touch screen in the late 2000's to the iPhone X that can now recognize your face. It is obvious that innovation is a main focus in this industry and as more features are released it seems companies aren't running out of ideas but are actually innovating faster. Since there is essentially an endless amount of possible ideas and companies only have a limited amount of money for research and development, what features are likely to be seen in the future? According to the article "Future Technology of Mobile Phones: What We Saw at Mobile World Congress 2018" the some of the biggest innovations we will see are improved smart recognition, durability and fold-ability, and augmented reality.

Smart phone companies have been in a constant search for ways to make their products more secure, Apple made a huge step in with its "touch id" released in 2013 with the iPhone 5s. Since then other smart phones have followed suit with fingerprint scanners. Apple has recently released "face id" with its iPhone X which is facial recognition used to unlock. While both face id and fingerprint scanning are huge innovations they have both proved they can quite easily be hacked or bypassed, in the future smartphones could evolve to recognize their users in multiple ways. A future smartphone may recognize its users by face further than by appearance, but also by contour of the face--to prevent hacking with a picture. Phones may also be able to recognize you based on patterns, such as how you type or tone of your voice--no longer will your friends be able to ask Siri to send prank messages on your phone.

Another innovation that may be seen in the future is increased durability of phones and even fold-ability. In a few years smart phones will be very hard to break, research and development is going into a new type of glass that is harder to break and could be "self-healing". Along with this there is also research being done on flexible screen materials so you could fold your phone up in your pocket.

Possibly hardest for most people to visualize in every smart phone is augmented reality. Augmented reality is the addition of virtual reality into reality, for example the game "Pokemon Go" projects virtual characters over your camera to appear in the real world. Apple recently released a measuring tool that uses augmented reality, point you camera at an object and a virtual measuring tape will appear next to it showing you almost exact dimensions. As this technology advances we could see countless possibilities for it in our smart phones like object recognition or more tools. For example you could hold your camera up and see information, reviews, and ratings on restaurants and businesses around you. These predictions are based on what new technologies companies are investing in, however new discoveries and developments can happen quickly, therefore it is impossible to say for sure.