All OS What is the next big hardware inclusion in mobile?

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montsa007

montsa007

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Most of us have seen the mobile hardware evolve from black & white button based handsets to the now available 64/108 MP Digital Camera Destroyers, or 5000/6000 mAh power houses, using a tiny mirror in back camera to click selfie to the now 1080p resolution front video cameras.

With all of this development, what exactly would be the next step in evolution for the mobile hardware industry, or is it just teeny tiny upgrades in existing hardware?

I had read an article wherein mobile manufacturers have pushed their innovations beyond boundaries & are under the pressure to churn something new to stand out. With the size of mobiles limited & the no of features required increasing, how do they fit in something new?

We've already seen some of the record breaking innovations like
-Waterproofing (Iphone, SOny, Samsung and others)
-Dual screen (Yota Phone)
-Turbo/Vooq/Dash/Hyper charging speeds (Common now)
-Foldable screens (Moto & Sammy)
-Bezel less screen (Sharp)
-DSLR like camera capabilities (Galaxy Zoom, Nokia 1020 and others)
-18000 mAh battery (Energizer phone, altough it was an epic flop)
-Reverse Charge (Common for Sammy)
 
If we knew, would we be sitting here answering this question?

On a more serious note, nobody knows. A lot of gadgets don't sell because of very useful features, they sell because of marketing. iPhone was not the first full touchscreen phone. It wasn't even as good as Moto Rokr E6 when it released. But it was the marketing that sold it.

People feel they need a camera all the time because they've been made to feel that. But photos have basically lost meaning because of how ubiquitous cameras have become. How often do you go back to look at old photos now?

So what feature will be the next big thing will depend on which feature is made to sound like the next big thing by the marketing department of Samsung/Apple.

Personally, I'd really like companies to focus on usability rather than features. A slightly smaller phone? A slightly lighter phone? A phone which has really good reception and excellent microphone? A camera which actually allows the person to work on the picture if they wish to rather than outputting run of the mill overly processed garbage. A phone which has an excellent DAC to drive high quality headphones for audio enthusiasts. A battery which is light weight and actually lasts a couple of days under normal load. Standardised wireless charging so that I can have one charging pad for all my phones.

Pipe dreams, I know...
 
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I would like to bloody bring back - it is time these are hailed as innovations again.

1. A customisable notification LED - Had it till Note 9. - The Nothing phone at least seems to have brought this back in a manner of speaking.
2. Flatscreen with a stylus - The S22 Ultra brought back the pen, now time to bring back the flatscreen too (Need to cling on to Note20 now)
3. Plasticback / Rugged phones
4. User-replaceable battery

With the right to repair gaining momentum in the US and Europe, I am hoping points 3 and 4 will be back as innovations!
 
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I think it would mostly be small incremental updates on hardware & software moving forward. The next really big thing could be something around AR but I think that is still at least some 5 years away.

Something major to look out for in the next few years could be:
  • Progress in under screen sensors technology for cameras, face id sensors & fingerprint sensors so that they are virtually indistinguishable from regular equivalents. This will truly allow these phones to have a full screen without any notches or holes. I think this is still at least a couple of years away.
  • Battery tech improvement: with higher density batteries. This would be specially useful for smart watches specially apple watch if it could last for more than a couple of days. Hopefully, phone manufactures will use this to provide even longer battery life rather than thinning them down. I really want to have phones that could last at least a week on a single charge with high usage.
  • Software improvements specially related to ML application in existing systems. This could potentially have a huge impact in the coming years, specially with the increased focus on ML hardware in phones. Just as an example, iOS 16 is lunching features where you could extract information from videos just like you can from images already. Plus the new feature which allows you to extract object from images with just a touch. These could be really useful & similar tech can be used to simplify/enhance multiple areas in the phones.
 
soulweaver said:
I would like to bloody bring back - it is time these are hailed as innovations again.

1. A customisable notification LED - Had it till Note 9. - The Nothing phone at least seems to have brought this back in a manner of speaking.
2. Flatscreen with a stylus - The S22 Ultra brought back the pen, now time to bring back the flatscreen too (Need to cling on to Note20 now)
3. Plasticback / Rugged phones
4. User-replaceable battery

With the right to repair gaining momentum in the US and Europe, I am hoping points 3 and 4 will be back as innovations!
Click to expand...
Even I preferred the notification light
As for user replaceable battery, doubt mobile makers will switch back as that is bad for their business, besides who knows the kind of tech we have may need a proper sealing? (Specially water resistant/proof phones)
CAT makes rugged phones
 
Modular phones would be very interesting, if we could choose the specs like building a pc (Moto Z series), buy only the modules which we want to upgrade.
 
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Graphene based batteries. These can charge at triple digit wattage without breaking a sweat and can practically last for lifetime. Only Xiaomi managed to get it into one of its mobile AFAIK. No idea why hasn't there been more mobiles with graphene batteries.
 
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lockhrt999 said:
Graphene based batteries. These can charge at triple digit wattage without breaking a sweat and can practically last for lifetime. Only Xiaomi managed to get it into one of its mobile AFAIK. No idea why hasn't there been more mobiles with graphene batteries.
Click to expand...
From what i remember huawei also did it a while back but that phone was launched only in china.
UserRG said:
Modular phones would be very interesting, if we could choose the specs like building a pc (Moto Z series), buy only the modules which we want to upgrade.
Click to expand...
Google had it a few years back but then scrapped it. There's a laptop company which does this launched 1-2 yrs back. LTT invested in it and is really promising.
 
I would love to have a small-form factor mobile. Like 5 inches screen. Years back when I was in search for something, my options were iPhone12 Mini and Pixel 4a. Not all powerful devices needs to be 6.5+inches in screen size. But, look at Pixel 6A. Also, Apple is ditching mini mobiles.
 
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Unfortunately, it seems the market for compact phones is too small for companies to pay attention to. While there's a vocal minority who wants compact phones, mostly when companies do launch compact phones, they don't do too well.

Of course, this is in part because most phones use similar components, which means advantages of scale render big phones cheaper than compact phones. I paid a hefty premium for Pixel 4a just because I wanted a small phone. Even my wife got a Xiaomi Lite Ne, which is not compact but relatively lighter, at a premium of 3-4k as compared to similarly specced phones. I don't mind a small premium for compact phones, but not having the option at all is annoying. Now that the Pixel a line is also not compact anymore, there's pretty much no good compact android phone in the market, at least in India.
 
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