Monday, December 12, 2011

Mobile phones of the near future


Jack Dikian
December 2011

Mobile phones are now used to make more than just phone calls. With an estimated 3 billion subscribers worldwide, more and more users now put the mobile phone to uses that would have been regarded fanciful only a few years ago.

Who would have imagined, for example, that your phone would be able to eavesdrop a short sample of music and report back the name of the song, the artist, the album, and even let you purchase the music and listen to it on the run.

And did we see mobile phones snapping pictures, let us send and receive emails, chat, get directions, and even watch television. The mobile phone certainly has come a long way since the days of brick-shaped analog phones that barely fit in a briefcase, let alone your shirt pocket.

So it’s never easy to gaze into a murky crystal ball to get a glimpse of what might be in store in the not-too-distant future. Here are, possibly, those features that are very likely.

  • Mobile Phone becomes your wallet - Near-field communications will turn mobile phones into credit or debit cards.
  • The World Wide Web in our pocket - Mobile phones supporting full HTML browsers and making the browsing experience as good as that achieved on other devices such as desktops.
  • Global positioning - system locating you and your phone anywhere on the globe.
  • TV on the run - Mobile TV in all its forms is expected to explode in the next few years.
  • Wi-Fi technology allowing us to use our phone in any Wi-Fi network hot spot.
  • Better picture quality