Three Futurists Predict the Phone of the Future
For years, our phones constantly changed shape, styles and sizes. Now they all kind of look the same. So what will the phone of the future look like? And will it even be a phone? Let's find out here at the Misalignment Museum in San Francisco. We're surrounded by art that's meant to get people thinking about what A I could mean for the future and whatever devices were using in the future, we know that they'll be built for A I and powered by A I. And we're already seeing that today, Samsung announced Galaxy A I for its phones in January Google followed suit with new A I features for pixel nine phones in August. And next month Apple will start rolling out Apple Intelligence. All of these updates will let your phone do things like rewrite text messages, create images and remove objects from photos. These tools may be too niche and specific to really meaningfully change the way you use your phone. But for how long will that be true? I spoke with three futurists to learn about where the smartphone is headed and what role A I will play in it. The future of smartphones is really tied to the future of generative A I your A I will say to you in the morning. Uh Hey doctor, can you're heading out today? Should we just follow you and download on demand? Yeah, that'd be great. And my transdermal patch over here, I can say, ok, call bill and then display a whiteboard so we can design that methane harvesting machine for Mars. The idea that we will only have one device to rule them all. So that is the phone without any peripherals, without any other smart sensors, collecting data. I think we're past that now and we are very much more likely moving into a future where we have a constellation of devices that do different things and the large brands of the world will start producing these amazing beautiful sets of jewelry if you will. So smartphone and fashion are going to be converged to some extent in the future and look more beautiful rather than these black slabs we carry today. I think people will have choices. I call it the morphing of the supercell. You know, the morphing will be I really would like one that looks like this and you'll have a foundry that will produce that on demand. My phone could be squeezable, maybe glass, more glass, maybe there's a wrist band that I can have and it's made of glass and it's a cell phone. Uh or my glasses are my cell phone. We'll start to see more spatial computing, more ended reality. Really interesting things that we might be able to do with audio. There's a lot that's coming and some of it's gonna look crazy and nonsensical weird mishmashes of things, smartphones that are tied to app universes that are enabled by generative A I are going to be like having your own 100 supercomputers that you can access for doing incredible things. We've already seen a few companies try to imagine what a future beyond the smartphone could look like. There's the rabbit R one, a tiny handheld device powered by A I that you can operate primarily by speaking into it. And then there's the humane A IP A wearable A I gadget with voice controls that can also project images onto your hand using lasers. Both of those devices were designed to help us get things done more quickly without being buried in our phones. The problem was that they just didn't work as expected. Only time will tell what's truly in store for our mobile devices. But if these predictions are accurate, the future of the smartphone may not just be about the phone itself but the devices it can connect to. And when you think about the direction the mobile industry has taken over the last decade with the rise of wearable devices like smart watches and wireless earbuds, it's not all that surprising. Now, in 2024 and beyond generative A I can take that to the next level by making our devices capable of better understanding us and providing what we need at the right time. Don't forget to subscribe to cnet for all the latest on A I and phones.