Doesn’t it feel great when you see some amazing technology packed into the tiny chassis of your smartphone? I bet it sure does. From the day when Motorola first managed to pack the bulky phones of that time in a wireless, small handheld device, the march of innovation in the mobile technology sector never stopped. First, it was only a device to make calls, but now it is nothing less than a whole computer shrunk to fit into your palms and it is getting more and more features packed into it with every passing second. So, what are you waiting for?
Below we have discussed top 5 technologies that can be a reality this year and feature in the premier flagship phones.
Li-Fi technology
Today we either use long, messy optical fibre cables or the mobile networks to connect to the internet. But with passing days it is getting harder to place more cables and the spectrum is struggling to accommodate new users every day. The use of radio signals won’t gonna work for us for long and this is where we need something new such as the Li-FI.
The Li-Fi is amazing and sounds sci-fi in every aspect. It uses light( yeah! You heard it right) to transmit data from one place to another. This gives the technology a huge spectrum of the visible light, ultraviolet light and the infrared radiation to work with. These new spectrums mean higher bandwidth and faster connections but the maximum speed tested by far is 42 Mbps.
The Li-Fi technology is brought to life by a company named pure LiFi co-founded by prof. Harald Haas of the University of Edinburgh. Recently in the mobile world congress at Barcelona, the company successfully showed off the technology in a Dell laptop and more importantly in a Samsung Galaxy S5 device. We can surely tell it’s not far when we’ll see a mobile shipped with the Li-Fi technology inbuilt.
Wireless charging from a distance
I know how annoying it can be when you’re in the middle of something and your phone’s juice runs out. Now you have to plug the device into the travel adapter and either wait for it to get charged or you can choose to deal with the messy wires. The wireless charging pads have managed to get rid of the wires but it doesn’t do you any favour in case you wanna use your device. Hopefully, these things are gonna change soon with brand new innovations to make charging possible from a distance.
Once again light comes handy for us if we wanna get our devices charged from a distance. The technology simply uses a highly focused but safe infrared light to get your devices charged much like how a solar panel generates electricity. this technology is still more in the testing phase and yet to roll out as a real product.
Another approach to the same challenge of charging devices without any wire from a distance is transmitting power via radio frequency and this approach has some real prototypes out in the market. Similar to optical wireless charging concept, these systems send out radio signals instead of the focused infrared light.
Wireless charging via radio frequency is displayed in the Barcelona MWC 2018 by companies such as Energous and Ossia. Different companies have come up with various prototypes and models for the wireless charging pads, which are compatible with all the latest android as well as iOS devices. Some of these can also be bought online with the help of Tata Cliq coupons at a very modest price. Moreover, Energous have already secured an FCC certification and if everything goes well and smooth, we can surely hope to see this technology roll out in the flagship devices later this year.
Flexible phones
Flexible phones are something that we have talked about for a long time but it never came to life despite several prototypes and millions of rumours about the potential release date.
Samsung and Lenovo are the two companies that are rumoured to work on this bendable smartphones sector. Lenovo has already showcased several prototypes of the era changing project while Samsung has chosen to take a more discrete approach and never ruled out a possibility of a bendable flagship.
It is being heavily rumoured that the Samsung Galaxy X(As it is expected to be named) is coming with a bendable display. At SID 2016 Samsung did show a roll-out display but it did not feature a touchscreen. Recently at the MWC 2018, Samsung claimed to not rush the launch the Galaxy X until it is ready to become the first foldable phone which sparked more fuel on the issue.
Fingerprint sensors that can be placed under the screen of your mobile
Fingerprint sensors made their debut 2-3 years ago and quickly become hugely popular thanks to its unmatched security and it is the fastest way to authenticate the owner. But in some phones, these sensors are placed a bit tricky locations and efforts are now starting to take place to make these fingerprint sensors more user-friendly.
This technology has seen massive development in recent years with all major OEMs are trying to pull this one off. Recently at CES 2018 in Las Vegas Vivo showed off the first prototype of a phone with such sensors. Vivo used a chip made by Synaptics that optically record your fingerprint pattern through the pixels of the OLED display. With such a prototype is already successfully displayed we can expect Vivo to roll out such phones in next months or so.
Augmented Reality
Once it was impossible to imagine to visit and explore a place in full 360 degrees while staying indoors but now slowly it is becoming a reality thanks to the application of Augmented reality.
Augmented reality is adding some perceptual information( generated by a machine) in your view. This can give you a never before experience of the surroundings and can present a completely new environment in front of you. Not only in terms of entertainment it has a huge potential in several other industries such as education, healthcare and plenty more.
Augmented reality is already a reality with Google, Apple and many other silicon valley giants are spending millions for development of this technology. The Zenfone AR by Taiwanese company Asus is the first to build a phone with Tango, an AR platform developed by Google. With Asus’s lead, we can expect to see more and more devices to come with the AR enhancements this year.
Conclusion
From all what we have discussed, it is certain that technology is touching new skies every day and breaking all the barriers that were previously believed to be unbreakable. With this advancement of technology and the steady growth of new smartphone users every year it can be stated that smartphones are probably going to be the biggest necessity in near future and it’ll be responsible for handling most of our day to day tasks and entertainment.