Future of mobile phones
In the future, phones will incorporate more features from other handheld devices. This is already happening to some extent, with MP3 players, PDAs, GPS receivers, digital cameras, etc. It has long been speculated by technology experts that the phone development will culminate in a device similar to the Star Trek communicator. The phone has proved the most popular handheld personal device, probably because communicating with other humans is the most important need among those fulfilled by personal electronic devices — certainly more important than listening to music, keeping track of appointments, navigating on roads, or taking pictures.
Because of that, it currently seems more likely that in the evolution of personal digital devices the phone will be the winner, appropriating more and more functions from competing devices as technologies develop. For example, the phone won the evolutionary battle with handheld computers, as all electronics inside both devices is similar and as phones now have displays as good and almost as large as those in PDAs. Another function that will be acquired by phones is that of the music player. The only difficulty in adapting mobile phones to new uses is that of form factor. For example, ebooks may well become a distinct device, because of conflicting form-factor requirements — ebooks require large screens, while phones need to be smaller. However, this may be solved using folding e-paper or built-in projectors. This may also prove useful when phone manufacturers will be adding video playback to their devices. Of course, using eyeglasses displays (from wearable computers) or direct output to the retina (e.g. a laser scanner as a retinal display) or visual cortex can easily solve these problems.
One function from the original Star Trek communicator that will almost certainly included in phones is translation function, because the application area is similar to that of the ordinary phone and no changes to the form factor will be necessary. Currently it is only available in stand-alone devices, such as Ectaco translators, but mobile phones will include various speech technologies as they are being developed. Many phones already have rudimentary speech recognition in a form of voice dialling. Of particular interest will be real-time voice translation (that must include speech recognition, machine translation and speech synthesis). However, more natural speech recognition and translation in these devices requires a drastic improvement in the state of technology: the phone's processor must be faster by several orders of magnitude with the phone requiring far more internal memory, or new ways of processing speech data must be found.
New developments in miniaturised hard disk drives may solve the storage space issue, therefore opening a window for phones to become portable music libraries and players similar to the iPod. However, the fact remains that natural language processing requires inordinately powerful hardware (given today's standards).
One of the drawback of all phone developments is reduced battery life. Colour screens and additional functions put increasing demands on the device's power source, and battery developments may not proceed sufficiently fast to compensate. However, different display technologies, such as OLED displays, e-paper or retinal displays, smarter communication hardware (directional antennae, multi-mode and peer-to-peer phones) may reduce power requirements, while new power technologies such as fuel cells may provide better energy capacity. It is also possible that mobile phones will, together with some other devices, be powered via the movement of clothing (or via microscopic solar cells embedded in clothing), or biochemical activity in human skin.
Traditionally, all functions of the mobile phone (microphone, speaker, radio communications, display, computer) were integrated in one single device. But some technologies already make it possible to break down the phone. The separated parts could communicate via wired connections, using short-range wireless radio technologies such as Bluetooth, or even by sending a current through the human skin. It is possible that in the future this opportunity will be used to further reduce the weight and footprint of the phone. A wearable display may be used by the phone (and by other personal devices). Such a display may be an eyeglasses projector, a retinal display or, in long-term, a direct connection to the optical nerve or the brain. Sound can already be sent to a wireless headset, or even to the ear directly via skull bones or a finger pressing on the ear.
In 2002, an English team led by James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau developed an implant designed to be inserted into a tooth during dental surgery. This device consists of a radio receiver and transducer, which transmits the sound via bone conduction through the jawbone into the ear. Sound is transmitted via radio waves from another device (ostensibly a mobile phone) and received by the implant. The implant is currently powered externally, given that no current power source is small enough to fit inside the tooth with it. In addition, the implant was only designed to receive signals, not transmit them.
Directly tapping into the inner ear or the auditory nerve is already technologically feasible and will become practical as surgical methods advance. In the far future it is likely to become practical to integrate most of the functions into the human body itself. By then the mobile phone will cease to be a distinct device.
Mobile communication systems are one of the most problematic areas for bandwidth use since unlike broadcast systems there are many different transmitters. As such many different ways of improving transmission have been considered, even those that might be considered surprising. Infrared transmission has already been used in experimental mobile phone systems, with the specific advantage that with strong atmospheric absorption very small cell size can be easily achieved. Beam forming is a strong design criteria in a number of modern systems and would also allow large increases in cell capacity. It is likely that future mobile phones will be able to switch between multiple communication protocols (satellite, GSM, GPRS, UMTS, WLAN, WiMax, optical/infrared, GPS, radio waves, others) depending on the required purpose, range, efficiency and service availability.
Rrticle originally published on http://en.wikipedia.org
