Smartphones are part of our daily life. We can’t really imagine one of our days without them. They started way back with telephones and were invented only for communication. Since then they have evolved a lot. And now we can use this technology for a lot of things, like our social needs, send and receive text messages, take photos and videos, access the internet, listen to music, and entertain us, etc. But the phone industry is evolving, this is why the mobile phone market is one of the most renewing ones, with multiple upgrades yearly. Some of these upgrades are really good and useful, but some of them are really useless and may work badly on the first-gen phone. But let’s see what are the latest trends that manufacturers keep evolving and let’s find the answer together on the question ‘Are there any new phone trends that make sense?
Foldable design
One year ago in 2019 at CES in Las Vegas, we saw that the foldable technology in the year 2020 will have a huge rise. The first generations from Samsung Z Flip and Fold are already released. They have a new technology, both in their material and engineering. They have only minor problems, but still, it’s something new. Maybe this is why foldable smartphones have not been totally accepted by consumers. However, the promise to have a greater screen size, maybe even a table size screen for a phone is something that most of the people would want. I believe that in some years, in the following generations of these phones, they will be something really wanted.
Artificial intelligence
AI techs significantly enhance our user experience, without us knowing it. In the phone industry, they are used to improve smartphones’ sensing, analyzing, and interacting functionalities. With data gathered from Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Global Positioning System technologies, your routines a smartphone can create a rich, offline profile from its user with all of his/her needs, and make suggestions that will help them with new solutions.
But don’t be scared this isn’t something new. Also as AI gets more and more space in smartphones it will also help improve your camera by taking better photos, or notifying you if you have a blurry picture. But it also helps in increasing your battery life by making calculations and recommending battery saver modes. And last but not least they are an effective way to increase your cybersecurity. And now with the evolution of online banking, this is something that we really need.
Increased screen size
Back in the days, the screens were really small on a phone (you know, in the pre-smartphone era). But now the phone-screen ratio has increased a huge increase. Now if you don’t have a phone with at least a 6-inch screen it’s not good enough. And of course, this improvement has more benefits than a nice design. It has way better visual aspects, higher resolution, increased visibility, etc. But tbh we buy these phones only because they look cool.
The other big advantage of having a big screen is our increasing user experience. As I told in the introduction, phones can and are used for entertaining purposes as well. Such as watching movies, reading, or playing games. And no matter whether or you’re playing FPS games, arcade games, or casino games you need a good view and enough space for buttons. Of course, there are slot games, where you only have one or two buttons to use, and the pause or back button. To be honest we all like to watch our favorite casino games on bigger screens. The whole experience with the effects and everything is better and we can enjoy our games more.
There are multiple design attempts to increase the screen size on the front of the phone. One of them is the design called water-drop notch, or infinity-u. This is an already used and very popular design, that has only a minimal curve on the screen where they place the camera. Phone companies like Samsung, Huawei, etc are already using this technology. This technology has a screen-to-body ratio of 85%, which is pretty impressive. And nowadays, companies are attempting to hide the front camera totally under the screen. This is called a no-notch display. They are working on a solution to disable totally the pixels in front of the camera, and this way there is no blocking element for the camera, and you will have a display with around 90% or more screen to body ratio. Currently, there are only good attempts for this design. But none of the famous manufacturers have implemented this on their phone.
5G
We can talk about innovations without mentioning the fifth generation of mobile connectivity, the 5G. The first 5G capable phone, the Samsung S20 5G was released on March 6, 2020. This means that the phone will be able to use a faster network than before. But other companies want to take their part too from the 5G movement, that’s why at MWC we’ve seen the 5G capable phones from Huawei, LG, Xiaomi, and ZTE.
You may ask what can help us increase network speed. In short, 5G networks will allow our portable technological devices, called phones, to access even faster download speeds. For most of us, this means that we can watch our favorite series on Netflix in HD or 4K with no disruption. And for more professional terms, people can send their files even faster. So a music producer can send his newer track faster, content creators can share their raw filer easily, and so on.
Wireless technology
There is no secret in the fact that mobile phone producers wish to create a fully wireless world for us. Some of these attempts are really good and useful, but some of them are total nonsense. And we already know the world of wireless earphones and earbuds, which was a totally fine idea. And now they are perfecting ways of creating ways of charging phones and other devices wirelessly. The fast charge options are working really great and fast on phones, so if they want to keep up with that performance, they will have a lot of work to do.
The new Samsung S10 has a cool feature with which the phone itself is able to charge other phones are wirelessly chargeable devices from its own power. And they are working on the Samsung Zero, the first phone with zero ports on it.
But that’s not everything. We all know that wireless charging usually uses electromagnetic induction theory, researchers at the University of Washington have found a new way of charging called ambient backscatter. With this technology, they can repurpose the electromagnetic waves signals already present around us as a power source. If they could perfect this technology, in the future we could have devices with infinite battery life, because they will be charged using these lost, unused signals. So all the “oh no, I forgot my charger home” problem will be no more.