Wish List for the Phone of the Future

The pace of technological innovation in mobile phones over the past decade has been astonishing. Even the most imaginative futurologist in 1999 would have been amazed at the diverse range of powerful communication, productivity and multimedia features now crammed into the small devices in our pockets.

Gazing towards the next 10 years, it would be great to see these features emerge in mobile phones:

• Battery that is constantly recharged kinetically (when moving around)

• Artificial Intelligence that simulates a human personal assistant (e.g. when an anniversary comes up, searches for a selection of gifts based on the event and the celebrant; tell it you want to go on a holiday and it books the flight and hotel based on your tastes and budget and also plans your itinerary for sightseeing, nights out, etc.)

• Bluetooth virtual reality glasses to watch HD movies and play games

• Client device functionality with application processing and data storage done on remote servers (cloud computing)

• Universal remote control functionality, using DLNA

• Social network application that detects people with matching criteria in the same vicinity, using bluetooth or wi-fi (e.g. strangers with similar interests on a bus are alerted about each other and can choose to strike a face-to-face conversation)

• P2P file distribution using bluetooth or wi-fi (e.g. multimedia files transferred from several phones near-by without requiring phone network or mobile internet)

• Realtime translator (microphone picks up the foreign language audio and the translated speech is relayed through the speaker)

• Full range stereo speakers for high fidelity sound (e.g. using carbon nanotubes)

Of course, the wish list can stretch as far as the imagination will go but these would be an exciting starting point for the next wave of mobile phone innovation!