If you can remember the days when mobile phones let you phone people and not much else then you too probably find yourself wondering from time to time just what manufacturers could now do to add yet more features onto them.
Now that the likes of iPhones and HTC models have cameras, GPS, internet access and games is there anything else left to add-on? I sat down and had a think about it the other day and came up with these ideas, some of which are perhaps more plausible than other.
A Projected Screen
A developer I know tells me that this one is actually on the way, although I am not sure if it will be in the Princess Leia type of way I have in mind. I sometimes find even the biggest phone screens too small to enjoy games or videos. What if the screen could be projected onto a wall so that it becomes a giant image without any loss of quality? The only problem I can find with this one – apart from the small matter of finding the technology to make it happen – is with trips to work by public transport. Can you imagine the walls and roof of the carriage of the train you travel on being filled with a bizarre mix of Angry Birds / snaps of the office party / sports results and such like?
The Phone You Can’t Lose
Do you remember that old joke about the golf ball with so many alarms and signals on it that it couldn’t ever be lost or stolen? A golfer shows it to his friend, who is blown away. “Wow, where can I buy one of those things?” he days. “Dunno mate, I found this one the other day”. There are programs for helping recover lost phones but what about one you couldn’t lose in the first place? I would like to suggest that phones could have a grip sensor which only allows the owner to hold it. If it senses a different set of fingerprints it goes hot and starts squealing. Hang on, what if you wear gloves though?
Solar Panels
I used to have a solar powered calculator at school and could never work out why it used a battery as well. Anyway, I had hours of fun putting my hand over the solar panel and seeing it switch itself off. It was certainly better than listening to the teacher droning on about maths. Of course the processing power of a calculator is miniscule compared to that of a smartphone although with continuous advancements in the energy field I wouldn’t rule this one out completely.
A KITT Phone
If you remember Knight Rider then you know what I am talking about here; a smart phone which lives up to its name. It could give you advice and of course use the GPS and augmented reality to keep you out of trouble when you are deciding where to go. It would have a choice of cool voices and would it be too much to ask if they were to project the head out into the world while it is talking to you? With the introduction of Siri Apple’s new speech parser perhaps we are heading that way.
Control Your Life
This last one is a bit scary really. What if your phone could control everything in your life? When you go to bed you say to it what you need to do the next day. While you sleep it makes reservations, checks maps, looks at road conditions and even programmes your burglar alarm for the time you are going to be out, in fact this conception is already a reality and was recently introduced by ADT Security. It might even let you make a phone call if you ask nicely.
This guest post is by David Samuel, an electronic media consultant, with over 10 years’ involvement with some of the world’s leading electronic retailers. David’s awareness and market intelligence make him one of the best equipped experts around. While specialising in laptops David’s knowledge covers a wider spectrum of consumer electronics.
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