John Locher / AP
People look at an Xperia XA2 Ultra phone after a Sony news conference at CES International, Monday, Jan. 8, 2018, in Las Vegas.
Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018 | 2 a.m.
Smartphones have become a gadget most can’t live without.
With advancements made each time a new phone model is released, what is new today won’t necessarily hold up as the normal tomorrow, said industry experts during a discussion Monday at the Consumer Electronics Show at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
They gave a glimpse at what’s the new normal in smartphones and what is on the horizon for everyone’s favorite pocket gadgets.
Although CES is not known for being a huge show for phone debuts, Justin Denison, Samsung’s vice president of marketing, said it’s more about what’s being showcased around the company’s smartphones.
“We’ll talk about how were building that intelligence into our ecosystem of our devices, so you get more out of them,” Denison said. “Things that will change people’s lives and become the new norm.”
The phone industry will still focus on display, battery and camera innovation. Major developments will be made with connectivity, artificial intelligence and other nonhardware-based improvements in the cellular realm.
5G
With the introduction of 5G connectivity on the horizon over the next year and a half for most areas, faster speeds and better connectivity are on the way.
Cities that have smart city technology — such as downtown Las Vegas’ Innovation District — will really take off.
Panelists at a Consumer Electronics Show event Monday, Jan. 8, 2018, include, from left, Jeff Ye, ZTE’s vice president of planning and partnership; Keith Kressin, vice president of Snapdragon Roadmap and Technologies at Qualcomm Technologies; Justin Denison, Samsung’s vice president of marketing, and moderator Ed Baig, USA Today personal tech columnist.
The 5G technology will be 100 times faster than the current 4G phones on the market, Denison said, allowing for up to a million devices in a given area to communicate at once.
“Now you can have everything around you connected to the network,” he said. “In certain cases when you really want it, you can have that massive bandwidth.”
The phone itself almost takes a back seat to what is possible around it, allowing for more advanced smart home office and city features.
Real time augmented reality and virtual reality transmission, connected automobiles, autonomous vehicles and other technology will progress more rapidly with 5G.
“As we enter into a world with more 5G, we also enter into a world with more artificial intelligence and more immersion, with pictures and videos or with AR and VR,” said Keith Kressin, vice president of Snapdragon Roadmap and Technologies at Qualcomm Technologies. “Those technologies are going to be synergistic (with 5G).”
The rollout of 5G will start in 2019 and continue into 2020 depending on geography, Kressin said.
Artificial Intelligence
With smart artificial intelligence already taking off on phones through Apple’s Siri and Samsung’s Bixby among others, the future includes adding more connectivity to devices in one’s everyday life.
Artificial intelligence is hardware and software working together in conjunction with the cloud and algorithms bringing the experience to fruition. The services are designed to open the capabilities of the phones they’re associated with, allowing the consumer to do more.
“It’s less about asking a trivia question to the internet and more about unlocking the power of the phone,” Denison said.
It is also used in phones today with the security features like fingerprint, iris and facial recognition being used to unlock phones.
The latest being worked on is palm recognition that could be used to unlock phones in the near future.
Everyday tasks will be made easier with artificial intelligence and the power of 5G connectivity, including when someone goes to the store but can't remember what they’re out of at home.
“They can ask to look inside their fridge at home (via a camera),” Denison said. “Do I have milk? Instead of going home, I can look inside my refrigerator (on my phone).”
With more AI being developed every day, the possibilities with the infusion of that in smartphones is limitless.
“Today you can say a few keywords to your device, and tomorrow you’ll be having full conversations,” Kressin said.
Battery
At the top of the list of most consumer reports on smartphones is the desire for improved battery life.
With having larger batteries inside a phone being half of the issue, creating ways to charge phones faster is the other portion. With quick charge phones being introduced, that go from zero to 50 percent charged in 15 minutes, heavy phone users won’t have to chronically check their battery, dreading the moment they must recharge it.
“That may not sound like a lot, but when you move from phone A to phone B, you realize that leaps of innovation that have been made,” Kressin said.
Utilizing new technology like artificial intelligence can aid battery life by helping better manage power usage by alerting you to what functions of a phone aren’t being used and which ones can be turned off to improve battery life.
“The opportunity doesn’t lie so much in the battery, but with AI we’ve seen in the data center power usage has been reduced by 30 to 40 percent,” Kressin said.
Display
The average size of a smartphone display has grown over the years, with the current average being 5.5 inches.
Phone makers are always looking at how they can improve and upgrade phone screens, with the latest being infinity screens (no edge), without home buttons.
One company, ZTE, is already looking toward the future as they introduced a dual-screen phone late last year.
The AXON M phone has a hinge on it so when closed it looks like a normal smartphone, but when you open the phone it has two screens side-by-side.
“The phone still has the one-handed operation … but when people want a larger display and two hands, this is something that’s like this (Axon M),” said Jeff Ye, ZTE’s vice president of planning and partnership. “It tends to get used for multitasking. We’re trying to replicate use cases that are already at the home or the office. Like when you’re in the office and you have two monitors.”
Another possible screen feature is flexible phone screens. Companies like Samsung have moved in that direction with a curved display, but to get to where the screen can completely bend is still years away.
“We have to be able to do this (bend the phone) repeatedly, keeping perfect quality,” Denison said.
