Cellular

The phone of tomorrow

Phones of the future will look totally different from phones today, with people probably no longer needing screened, handheld devices to make calls and connect with the internet.

This reality, however, is still a good fi ve to 10 years in the making. The current focus in the industry is on the production of phones with more memory to better accommodate those using their phones as cameras, video recorders, and for work and gaming, according to Tony Shi, mobile product line manager at Hisense.

AR-enabled wearables might be replaced by implants in the future.

foreseeing that it will radically change us

GLENNEIS KRIEL investigates the ever-evolving ways our mobile devices are used

Along with this comes a stronger focus on the development of improved phone batteries. To illustrate, Hisense’s Infi nity E50 model, to be released next year, will have double the memory of the company’s current range and the battery will be fully recharged within roughly an hour.

“The battery will be extended from 4 000 mAh to more than 5 000 mAh, allowing moderate users to use their phones for up to two days without needing to recharge,” Shi says.

Design trends

In terms of design, Shi says slim phones will remain trendy with the screens increasing to a maximum of seven inches, to accommodate the increasing number of people who are using their phones to replace televisions and computers. The development of rugged phones will remain limited, with construction workers and miners being the main users.

Companies would nevertheless continue innovations to deal with the fact that bigger screens break more easily. Hisense, for example, is offering a one-year free screen replacement for their H40 series to address this issue. Shi says the market for folding and bending phones will also remain limited, as the technology to build these phones renders them too expensive for your average user.

The biggest transformation will come from the arrival of 5G, which has the potential to increase processing and internet speeds by up to a hundred times, according to Shi. “It will allow users to do much more with their phones than was possible up until now, turning their phones into technology centres with the ability to do everything from controlling electric appliances to

running businesses and fi nances.”

The AR market, valued at R25.3-billion in 2020, is expected to grow with a compound annual growth rate of 55 per cent up until 2028, according to Quince Market Insights.

of other products that would go well with the consumer’s choices, or the tourism industry, which is using it to deepen travel experiences,

Augmented reality – worth the fuss? while the education sector is livening up study material through interactive learning. “AR has the potential to turn us into super-humans, by

Augmented reality has seen from various sectors shop, interact and We already have the ability to create solutions astronomical growth since the launch do business, by allowing them to size and that use facial recognition scanning to allow of Pokémon Go in 2015, with many t virtual produce, and better share and you to identify people, and then match them people now using it to “spice up” visualise ideas and concepts. with information about them. sel es. The technology, however, has He points to the examples of international “For now, however, adoption is hampered far greater applications than mere gaming furniture and home accessories supplier, Ikea, by the high cost of developing software to run and self-indulgence, with Gerald Ferreira, which is taking this a step further with their these types of solutions, plus privacy issues,” the founder of Virtual Reality South Africa, interior design app by offering suggestions Ferreira concludes. allowing us to access information in real time. over time. “Augmented reality is actually not as DID YOU KNOW? advanced as people think, but a mere overlay According to Gerald Ferreira, the introductions of Apple’s ARKit and Google’s ARCore of the digital world onto the real world,” software development kits have standardised development tools, which has resulted in Ferreira says. He asserts the technology is augmented reality now being enabled on over 500 million devices, and there now being already changing the way in which people over 2 000 AR apps available in the iOS App Store and 200-plus on Google Play.