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Every major smartphone company is touting AI as the next frontier of smartphone innovation. While AI is indeed valuable, I believe there are far more groundbreaking technologies in the works that can change how we use our phones in a way never imagined before.
1Graphene and Solid-State Batteries
Almost all modern consumer electronic gadgets use lithium-ion batteries. Their conception dates as far back as the 1970s, and they first became commercially available in the early 1990s. Since then, we’ve been almost entirely dependent on this precious metal for technological progress. And now, we’re starting to reach the limit of its merit.
As we continue to expect more from our devices and experiment with new form factors, they’ll require faster processors and bigger displays, both of which require more power. But there’s only so much room inside a phone, and most of it is already occupied by the battery.
That means while lithium-ion once helped push progress forward, it’s now actively holding it back. Clearly, we need to find a way to store more power in a smaller footprint.
Luckily, we have some promising candidates, namely graphene and solid-state batteries. Both offer higher energy density, longer lifespan, and faster charging speeds. If investments continue, we could look at a future where a single charge can last you an entire weekend or longer, and recharging your phone takes 10 minutes or less.
2Over-the-Air Charging
I’mnot a big fan of wireless charging, mainly because it’s not technically wireless. After all, the charging dock on which you put your phone is plugged into the wall via a wire.
Ideally, you should be able to charge your phone no matter where you are in the room without having to keep it down—and this is exactly what over-the-air charging promises. Xiaomi and Motorola have been working on this tech for a while now.
The reason it’s not ready is that transmitting power via air is even more challenging and slower than doing it via a charging dock. That said, if we switch to graphene batteries, its high conductivity can help speed up charging and mitigate this drawback.
3Stronger Ultra-Thin Bendable Glass
The fragility of the screen on foldable phones is the biggest thing holding back their adoption. Even if we eliminate all othercommon issues with folding phones, making a sheet of glass both bendable and tough at the same time is very difficult.
Why? Because flexibility and toughness are opposing traits. To make a sheet of glass more bendable, you have to make it thinner, which inevitably makes it weaker, and vice versa.
The good news is that companies are indeed working to fix this problem. We know thatCorning, the company that makes Gorilla Glass, is investing in making ultra-thin glass tougher for the next generation of foldable phones.
We are actively developing next-generation glass-based solutions that will continue to push the boundaries of toughness and offer consumers the damage protection they expect of their devices.
4Long-Range Continuous Optical Zoom
We’ve come to expect smartphones to have multiple camera lenses: one for wide, one for ultrawide, and one for telephoto. But this isn’t ideal because these lenses are at fixed focal lengths, resulting in inconsistent image and video quality. It’s why the quality of your shots, while good at particular magnifications, deteriorates as soon as you zoom in anywhere between those fixed focal points.
For example, if your phone has a 3x telephoto lens, zooming in to 2.9x magnification will likely output a worse-looking photo. However, when you zoom in to 3x, your phone switches to the telephoto lens, and you experience an increase in image quality.
Companies try to reduce the effects of this deterioration by adding high-res cameras and digitally cropping into shots. But all these are just makeshift solutions until we figure out how to achieve long-range continuous optical zoom on smartphones. Ideally, your phone should have just one excellent camera that can do everything—and we’re getting there.
At CES 2023, LG Innotek announced the world’s first camera module with 4x-9x continuous optical zoom in a folded optics design. This surpasses the range of the Sony Xperia 1 VI, which allows continuous zoom from 3.5x to 7.1x.
Another approach to achieving this is using a retractable camera lens, identical to DSLRs and mirrorless cameras. Xiaomi showcased a concept phone with the same in 2020, and we’ve already seen the feature implemented in an actual commercial unit as well on the Tecno Phantom X2 Pro.
Of the two, I think the folded optics design is far more likely to be the future of smartphone cameras, simply because the obsolescence of pop-up selfies has taught us that using motorized moving parts in a phone is not the best idea.
5MicroLED Panels
If Samsung’s most recent investments are any indication, microLED will likely be the next standard of smartphone displays. OLED is the current front-runner of smartphone displays thanks to its color accuracy and deep blacks, but it suffers from image burn-in and isn’t as bright as LCD.
MicroLED fixes both of these issues while retaining thebenefits of OLED, consuming less energy and reducing screen glare. Samsung’s The Wall TV already uses microLED, so we probably won’t have to wait too long to see it come to a Galaxy flagship.
6Fully Bezel-Less Displays
People have been making renders of fully bezel-less phones for many years now. We haven’t seen a commercial unit yet because the front of the device houses not only the display but also the proximity sensor, the ambient light sensor, the earpiece, and most importantly, the selfie camera. And there’s a limit to how far up you may squeeze them.
Even if you move all the other components elsewhere, the front camera has to remain at the top for obvious reasons. And so, the only way to hide it is to bury it under the display. Some gaming phones do come with an under-display camera, but their image quality is poor because the screen diminishes the light entering the sensor.
That said, under-display cameras are getting better, and when they become good enough to be put on a mainstream flagship, they will allow us a leap in design we’ve all been waiting for.
While some of the above innovations may take several years to come to smartphones, others will likely make it within the next three to five years. That may still seem like a long time, but considering their potential, I’d say they’re worth the wait.
