An Introduction

Where are we headed?

Roy Amara was a famous scientist and futurist author, well known for his predictions about the future of technology in particular. Amara coined Amara's law, which states that "[People] tend to overestimate the effect of technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run" (Nelson, B.E).

Source: IFTF's Roy Amara Fund (http://www.iftf.org)

American Futurist Roy Amara

In this blog we will be looking only 7 years into the future of mobile phones. 7 years may seem very short in the grand scheme of things, but within the context of technology in our modern age it is the equivalent of a lifetime of progress. We will be documenting what famous scientists and futurists are saying about mobile phones in the year 2025. No person can truly predict the future, but with the help of experts we can begin to speculate within the scope of exponential progress. Expect the unexpected.

References:

Institute For The Future. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.iftf.org/iftf-you/make-the-future/roy-amara-fund/

Nelson, B. E., Santoso, A., Rice, J., Farrier, J., & Mathews, A. P. (2012). Four Geeky Laws That Rule Our World. Retrieved from https://www.neatorama.com/2012/09/05/Four-Geeky-Laws-That-Rule-Our-World/

Past - Present - Future of Phones

References: -

1)Future of Smart Phones by Harish Dash (May, 2017)

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-smart-phones-harish-dash/

2)  History of Mobile Phones (April, 2018)

https://www.uswitch.com/mobiles/guides/history-of-mobile-phones/

3) HoloFlex SmartPhone from the Future(May, 2016)

https://ifixscreens.com/holoflex-smartphone-future/

Extending Mobility

Future upgrades and changes to phones

Throughout history of phones we have seen major upgrades and changes in their design and their mode of communication. It is almost hard to believe that phones which were once full of buttons and cords have now evolved into multi purpose portable touchscreen devices that we can easily carry around wherever we go. The drastic changes in mobile phones since the last few decades have made them into a necessity instead of a luxury and that raises more questions about what changes will we see in mobile phones in the next decade and what new roles will they be playing in our daily lives.

Steve Jobs unveils the very first iPhone(2007)

                        

Very first mobile phone demonstrated by Martin Cooper(1973)

Nowadays we are already starting to see new and useful features being added to mobile phones. For example Samsung galaxy s8, Google pixel 2 and iPhone 8 have water resistance feature to protect from water damage. More and more phones are starting to adapt this change as the demand for it increases. The engineer Scott Havard from iFixit explains water resistant phones like an egg. "If you have an Easter egg that can break into two parts, all of a sudden the game changes, Water goes to the place of least resistance the gap between the shells and sometimes, it can get through. With enough pressure, you can push water molecules into the device," says Havard. According to cnet there is no such thing as  truly water proof phones even with all the techniques and drying agents to keep the water out. In the future we will see water resistance and maybe water proof phone become mainstream. This article at tuffphones predicts that the future is water proof  and in the coming years we can expect water proof phones to have become mainstream.

Flexible phones are another innovation we are likely to see in the coming years. Companies like Samsung have already released a sneak peek of the fold-able Galaxy X. This article from TechRadar quotes "Foldable phones are coming  it’s only a matter of time and it's looking increasingly like Samsung could be the first company to commercially launch one, possibly as soon as this year.". Other companies like Lenovo have also revealed a concept of a flexible phone named Cplus that you can wear on your wrist. Lenovo said it won't be available for sale any time soon but we can expect devices like this in the upcoming years. Here is another article from cnet showing how this will look. This is just the beginning for the world of flexible mobile phones. Samsung's launch in 2019 could pave way for more creative ideas to take place by 2025. Here is a video showing different kinds of concepts of flexible phones



Embedded sims (eSims) are also another great new features mobile phones are expected to have in the upcoming years. They are basically sims which are built into your phone so you don't have to go through the trouble of removing or inserting it every time you want to change your plan because it can all be done digitally. According to this article "An eSIM is still a SIM card. Customers still have to sign up with an operator. They still have access to advanced services, and can transfer their phone numbers. They have a unique contact number, and the same legal requirements still apply with regard to customer identity" (Christine Lemoine). ESims will likely replace the physical sims we have been using all our lives as explained here and phones are going to adapt to this change to keep updated with current technology. Alex Shoolman predicts the future of eSims in his article "It’s predicted that by 2021 there will be over 500 million mobile and IoT devices shipping with an inbuilt eSIM. Yearly. So by 2025 it’s quite likely your new phone will not only have an eSIM, but so will your car, your laptop, your watch and everything else.(Alex Shoolman)". By the next decade we are likely to see eSims rule the world of mobile and IoT devices.

These are only few examples of what the future of mobile phones will look like. The world of mobility is full of endless possibilities and ideas which we are still yet to see.

References
https://www.cnet.com/news/how-does-waterproofing-work-apple-iphone-7-samsung-galaxy-s7-sony-xperia/
https://www.tuffphones.co.uk/waterproof-mobile-phones/waterproof-phones-are-the-future-for-us-all
https://www.techradar.com/news/samsung-galaxy-x-the-story-of-samsungs-foldable-phone-so-far
https://www.cnet.com/news/lenovo-shows-off-superflexible-phone-you-wear-like-a-watch/
https://www.neowin.net/news/lenovo-offers-another-look-at-cplus-its-flexible-android-smartphone-concept
https://hellofuture.orange.com/en/esim-coming-soon-mobile-networks-services-near/
https://www.alexshoolman.com/blog/2018/03/16/smartphones-2020-2025-future-predictions/

Phones & The Internet of Things

Will Phones Still be relevant by 2025?

IoT devices in 2025 and will mobile phones become irrelevant due to new devices such as wearable devices? Right now it may seem impossible for such a thing as mobile phones to become irrelevant as they are almost never way from us however with new technology such as smartwatches and even hoodies that function as a phone it's becoming easier to go without a phone as it's far easier to just look at your wrist to view a text than to find your phone in your pocket and then turn it on and then see the text and when it comes down to it the easier product to use the more likely it will be used over the more time-consuming product aka the mobile phone.

We have already started to see this happen with people getting rid of home phones entirely and using only their mobile phone instead so if new devices such as smartwatches keep coming out isn't it only a matter of time before mobile devices become the next home phones with many getting rid of them entirely? The prediction of cell phones going obsolete has been called before in 2017 in a business insider which said: "Weinberger reasons that new technologies, like augmented and virtual reality, voice-activated assistants, and physical gestures, will eliminate the need for a smartphone"(Tim Bajarin, April 18, 2017).

Another new device which would threaten to make mobile phones irrelevant is a device called neural lace developed by neuralnk which, "the company, called Neuralink, was developing "neural lace" technology that would allow people to communicate directly with machines without going through a physical interface"(Danielle Muoio Mar. 27, 2017) meaning that if you wished to text someone you would not need to pull out any device not a phone and not a smartwatch all you would need to do is connect to the device with your mind and you would be able to text that person and in that case why would you ever need a mobile phone? of course, right now the device is only being used to treat certain diseases but it has the potential to overtake phones with its easy usage of another device similar to neural ace made by Facebook would "developing noninvasive brain-computer interface technology that would allow people to communicate with external hardware devices"(Danielle Muoio Mar. 27, 2017).

IoT short for the internet of things have been estimated to be at 15.41 billion devices connected in 2015 and now are estimated to be at 23.14billion in 2018 so in 7 years from now in 2025 it's estimated by"IDC found that there will be 80 billion connected devices in 2025"( IDC, February 15th, 2018) which would help "generate 180 trillion gigabytes of new data that year"( IDC, February 15th, 2018). It's forecasted that by 2025 there will be over 8billion mobile phone subscribers and while 8 billion may seem like a lot compared to the predicted 80 billion IoT devices it's almost nothing and with that being the case can mobile phones still stay relevant? some think that devices such as voice bots will be the end of mobile phones as said here "I'm predicting that, by 2025, voice bots will become so prevalent, so powerful, and so useful in all areas of business and our personal lives that we won't need smartphones anymore"(John Brandon, N/A).

Source: http://stats.areppim.com/archives/insight_mobile.htm

In conclusion based offed the new devices still coming out and the amount of IoT devices predicted by 2025 I predict that by 2025 mobile phone will be similar to home phones today where they will be around only for those who either want them just in case or have them because they don't feel the need to get a new device instead.

References:
(IDC February 15, 2018) IDC: 80 billion Connected Devices in 2025 for generating 180 trillion GB of Data and IoT Opportunities retrieved from: http://www.vebuso.com/2018/02/idc-80-billion-connected-devices-2025-generating-180-trillion-gb-data-iot-opportunities/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/471264/iot-number-of-connected-devices-worldwide/

(Tim Bajarin, April 18, 2017)Will Smartphones Ever Be Obsolete? Retrieved from:
http://time.com/4744303/will-smartphones-ever-be-obsolete/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/274774/forecast-of-mobile-phone-users-worldwide/

(John Brandon, N/A) Why Smartphones Will Become Extinct by 2025 retrieved from: https://www.inc.com/john-brandon/why-smartphones-will-become-extinct-by-2025.html

(Danielle Muoio Mar. 27, 2017)Elon Musk has launched a company that hopes to link your brain to a computer Retrieved from: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-neuralink-connect-brains-computer-neural-lace-2017-3

Phone Hardware of 2025

Machine Learning Hardware

Machine learning is a subset of AI which has been around in theory since the 1960's. Only lately modern hardware has made it possible to utilize machine learning for practical purposes like image recognition and natural language processing (Forbes, 2018). At present, machine learning is hard to access for anyone who does not dabble in state of the art technology. Take a look at the below video - it showcases Microsoft's president speaking about the future of AI on smartphones and the transformative technology of smart assistants for everybody on Earth:

Until very recently, all state of the art AI research was conducted on traditional Graphical Processing Units (Fogarty, 2017). Companies like Google and ARM are developing specialized hardware which will likely be embedded into our phone hardware by 2025. New advances in technology like Tensor Processing Units developed by Google will allow us all to harness the power of machine learning in an energy efficient manner, and in the small form factor suitable for a phone (Galeon, 2018).

Quantum Computing

Quantum Computing is a fascinating leap forward in how we look at computers. Everything is changed, down to how we interpret the smallest logical unit of a computer: the bit. It is estimated that by 2025 we will be capable of harnessing the power of 100+ QuBits (Quantum Bits).

Source: Engaget.com: This is what a 50-qubit quantum computer looks like (https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/09/this-is-what-a-50-qubit-quantum-computer-looks-like/)

A quantum bit is a unit of information that can achieve quantum entanglement. A normal computer bit can have the value of 1 or 0. A quantum bit can have a value of 1 and 0 at the same time!

Unfortunately, QuBits must always be kept at sub-zero temperatures. At present only industrial-sized freezers can reliably house the massive but fragile power of quantum computers. However, by 2025 it is estimated that cloud computing platforms and specialized hardware will be capable of delivering this immense power into the palm of your hand, right on your phone (Dolev, 2018; Peng, 2018).

“Quantum computing will definitely be applied anywhere where we’re using machine learning, cloud computing, data analysis...” - Kevin Curran, a cybersecurity researcher at Ulster University and IEEE senior member

References

Dolev, S. The quantum computing apocalypse is imminent. (2018, January 05). Retrieved from https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/05/the-quantum-computing-apocalypse-is-imminent/

Fogarty, K. The Next Phase Of Machine Learning. (2017, November 9). Retrieved from https://semiengineering.com/the-next-phase-of-machine-learning/

Galeon, D. AI smartphones will soon be standard, thanks to machine learning chip. (2018, February 14). Retrieved from https://futurism.com/ai-smartphones-machine-learning-chip/

Microsoft - The Impact of Artificial Intelligence - President of Microsoft, Brad Smith. (2018, March 31). Retrieved from https://youtu.be/pYW12_TZyWA

Peng, T. (2018, February 23). Alibaba Launches 11-Qubit Quantum Computing Cloud Service. Retrieved from https://medium.com/syncedreview/alibaba-launches-11-qubit-quantum-computing-cloud-service-ad7f8e02cc8

Team, I. From Imitation Games To The Real Thing: A Brief History Of Machine Learning. (2018, July 18). Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/insights-intelai/2018/07/17/from-imitation-games-to-the-real-thing-a-brief-history-of-machine-learning/