The era of smartphones might be coming to an end, and it is all thanks to Augmented Reality (AR) technology. The history of phones dates back to 1947, when AT&T first commercialized mobile telephones known as “Mobile Telephone Service” (MTS) (Brookes, 2012). Smartphones did not just appear out of nowhere, it evolved as technology progressed. The first smartphone was introduced in 1992, called IBM’s Simon (Tweedie, 2015).
The point was to have a handheld phone with features beyond just the regular calling and text messaging. This phone was connected to the internet and could be used for sending and receiving emails, writing notes, a method to schedule appointments, and more. Nowadays, the regular smartphone has become so integral in our personal lives that it is rather impossible to live without it. Social media, work, reminders, entertainment, camera – These things are all possible in a single pocket-sized device.
We may think that smartphones are getting better and better, while it is true, the truth about the future is to that all the features of a smartphone can be achieved without the need of having a phone at all. The biggest tech companies, Microsoft, Alphabet, Apple, are working to kill the smartphone industry once and for all (Weinbeger, 2017). The development of the AR technology will allow 3D images to be displayed directly into our retinas. Why do we need a clunky smartphone if we could have our messages displayed directly in front of our eyes, search the internet, take photos, watch movies, and much more? This era could come sooner than we think, perhaps within a decade or two.
Looking further into the future, we can even see the removal of smart wearables by having our brains directly connected to computers. This may seem sci-fi but an actual company Neuralink, created by the tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, is working on exactly this (Weinbeger, 2017). The goal of this company is to link our brains with computers so that we are able to stay ahead of intelligent artificial intelligence systems that may deem the human race useless. In this age the human race will possess super intelligence in ways we have never imagined.
References
Brookes, T. (2012). A Brief History Of Mobile Phones. [online] MakeUseOf. Available at: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/history-mobile-phones/ [Accessed 7 Oct. 2018].
Tweedie, S. (2015). The world’s first smartphone, Simon, was created 15 years before the iPhone. [online] Business Insider. Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-first-smartphone-simon-launched-before-iphone-2015-6?international=true&r=US&IR=T [Accessed 7 Oct. 2018].
Weinberger, M. (2017). The smartphone is eventually going to die, and then things are going to get really crazy. [online] Business Insider. Available at: https://www.businessinsider.nl/death-of-the-smartphone-and-what-comes-after-2017-3/?international=true&r=US [Accessed 7 Oct. 2018].
