The Future Smartphone: More Folds, Less Phone, A Whole Lot Of AI

Powerful smartphones will pay the price, at least in terms of sales. During the 2022 holiday season, smartphone shipments fell more than 18% compared to last year. Overall, last year was the lowest annual freight volume since 2013. Research firm IDC said this was due to "significantly weaker consumer demand, inflation and economic uncertainty".

It only takes twice the size of a grocery bill to feel that pressure, but macroeconomics aside, the smartphone itself deserves some of the blame (or credit) for piqueting our interest. Smartphones are truly amazing devices. This is why we are so dependent on them and why most people in many places around the world have them. You don't have to spend a lot of money to get a high-end phone. Have you recently used a $300 or $400 phone? They are quite good. Telephones are increasingly usable; Why buy a new one when you can just replace a good battery? There is also a growing market for used or refurbished cars.

So what does the future hold for phones in an era of declining sales? As WIRED celebrates its 30th anniversary as a publication, we asked more than half a dozen technologists, makers, designers, analysts and futurists for their thoughts on the future of smartphones. Some have emphasized the form factor. Others say enhanced silicon will help us distinguish between "real" media and fakes or facsimiles created by artificial intelligence. And few people predict that actual phone calls will take a back seat. However, almost everyone thinks that smartphones are something we will literally and figuratively take with us. The smartphone market may never experience the explosive growth it experienced in the 2010s, but the almighty handheld is here to stay.

Below, we present their responses to five questions. Smartphones and what will our use of the smartphone look like in 10 years?

Tony Fadel, director of Build Collective. I'm not a satirist, so I'm not sure what's going to happen next. But I know what's going on technologically. I think we will see better and better performances. More vivid colors, better power management, and more. But in addition, the pixel density will be really high, and the question will arise: what else can be hidden under the screen?

The complex will have a niche; They are very expensive and due to the nature of the mechanical system will increase. So I think there will be a certain niche or certain needs for them.

In particular, I believe that the communication between the pixels, the CPU and the graphics cores you are looking at will be completely encrypted. So now when we say something is encrypted, it goes from the device to the server. It is encrypted during transmission or storage. In the future, things will be encoded between the chip and the I/O. And that's why you want to know that something really happened. Therefore, when recording sound, photo or video, they are processed with a special rod and stamped. This confirms that it was not a deep fake, that it has not been tampered with, retouched or manipulated in any way.