11 Mobile Innovations More Relevant Than Flexible Phones

More than 1 billion people use smartphones worldwide, so it's not surprising to find that manufacturers are working hard to develop even more technological advances for the mobile phone market.

A recent example of one of these innovations is the bendable phone. The first smartphones to make this concept widely available were LG's G Flex and Samsung's Galaxy Round. Do we actually require a bendable phone, one could ask?

I can think of a lot of other advancements that would interest me more than hearing about another flexible phone, despite the fact that cellphones with flexible displays may seem like a brilliant invention. We may be pushing the envelope with curved phones, but other mobile advancements are being worked on that have greater utility and appeal. as an example.

It's no secret that mobile phone batteries deplete quickly (and sometimes at the worst possible moment). The issue has long been known to researchers, who have been working hard to develop powerful batteries with more charge cycles and longer battery lives.

Better power management is usually good news for power users—after all, you did spend hundreds, if not thousands, on those smartphones.

Research on larger batteries, batteries using Leyden's electrolyte, batteries with silicon, batteries with tin, and other topics are just a few of the numerous current initiatives. A smartphone of the future might have a battery that charges in only five minutes and lasts all day.

We would value simpler charging procedures if not longer-lasting batteries. Why do we still need cords to charge our cellphones when devices like the Nokia Lumia 920 and LG Nexus 4 have wireless charging built in?

Even better, while wireless charging often relies on the idea of electromagnetic induction, University of Washington researchers have discovered a brand-new method of charging known as ambient backscatter.

By employing this method, we may transform the wireless signals that are already present in our environment into a power source and a communication channel.

Think of a smartphone from the future that has an endless battery life because it charges from other wireless devices (for example, signals from a television tower). In other words, a traditional power supply won't be required.

If you've ever dropped a phone, you're aware of how painful it can be. Fear not; Nokia is aiming to make use of graphene, which is touted as the strongest substance in the world and 300 times stronger than stainless steel, in an effort to make a breakthrough in contemporary computer environments.

In other words, if Nokia succeeds in making phones out of graphene, we may eventually have an unbreakable smartphone that can survive a fall into concrete without suffering too much damage (to its exterior and to our wallets).

Tougher phones require stronger screens because we obviously want the phone to survive a bad fall with no damage. The good news is that future mobile devices might have tougher screens made of sapphire or other materials.

Did you know that sapphire may also be planned to be used for screens, possibly in the iPhone 6? Apple may have first used sapphire in their Touch ID fingerprint scanner/home button in the iPhone 5s.

The man-made material can be made lighter when combined with a thin coating of glass since it is thinner, more scratch-resistant, and lighter. Additionally, Corning is developing Gorilla Glass 3, which it claims can perform all the functions of sapphire and more. It benefits consumers in every situation.

What tablet could possibly be made thinner than the iPad mini, which is as thin as a pencil? The creators of PaperTab call it paper thin. It has a touchscreen display and the appearance and flexibility of a piece of paper, yet it is driven by an Intel processor. Touching one PaperTab to the next is all it takes to transfer material.

You don't lose any screen area because it has a 10.7-inch screen despite being extremely tiny. In order to make this groundbreaking technology marketable, researchers are now improving it.

Flip phones may be a thing of the past, but tablets and smartphones may one day be able to be folded like paper.

Can a smartphone, no matter how "smart" it becomes, make decisions for you? It might be able to if it possesses the power of contextual intelligence, also known as practical intelligence.

In addition to using personal information about you and contextual intelligence technologies to make decisions for you even before you had a query in mind, smartphones will use sensors to collect data about your physical surroundings and situations.

You may be familiar with 3D printing, but have you heard of 3D smartphone scanning? Future smartphones with depth-sensing cameras will be able to take better photos and enable augmented reality games and handheld 3D scanning.

Imagine a video arcade game that scans your home and creates a challenge utilizing the furniture, walls, and floor plan of your actual home.

Structure Sensor, the first mobile depth-sensing technology, was created by Occipital. Occipital has already created apps that will let us scan objects or even entire rooms in 3D.

Using the camera and sensors on your smartphone, augmented reality overlays the objects around you with additional layers of helpful digital information, such as text, movies, photographs, and audio.

When you position your phone up in front of an unknown museum exhibit and point it, imagine that your phone displays information about the exhibit as you approach it.

Consider pointing your phone at a movie poster to learn the film's release date, cast, showtimes, and options for purchasing tickets; at a restaurant to learn its star rating; or at a hotel to learn about available rooms.

When multi-screen capabilities are available, there is no reason to limit your view to the size of the screen you have available. The goal is to connect and share your smartphone's screen with a tablet, television, or projector without being constrained by various platforms or operating systems and irrespective of design or construction.

We already have Miracast, which enables wireless video streaming between several devices without the need for wires or even a network connection. Samsung has also released the MultiScreen SDK, which enables connections between iOS and Android apps and the display of content on smart TVs.

Are you tired of fumbling around for the remote because it keeps escaping and hiding in couches? Transform your smartphone into a remote. Smartphones now come with built-in IR blasters and remote control software, thanks to the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4 as pioneers (e.g., "My Room" in the Galaxy S4).

What does this imply? You may, however, turn your smartphone into a traditional, non-smart TV remote control that works with it. You can at least contact this remote control in case it goes missing.

Both the front and back cameras on current smartphones can only be used simultaneously. Future smartphones might feature dual-camera recording with improved camera support. In reality, certain phones, including the Samsung Galaxy S4 and LG Optimus G Pro, already have this feature.

Dual recording technology will result in cutting-edge, customized camera apps that will create new opportunities for imaginative recording. Imagine using this dual recording feature to one day combine your personal dance performance with a TV dance routine into a single video.

Perhaps we should broaden our horizons and look past the news headlines because there are a ton of opportunities in the sector of mobile technology. Please feel free to let us know about any more mobile advancements you are aware of or anticipate.