What Will We Use After The Smartphone Era?

A few weeks ago, my colleague Lohmann prophesied the end of the smartphone era, which is basically logical, because nothing lasts forever. But when the smartphones are no longer there, what comes next? After all, one device or the combination of several devices must replace the glass plates in our hands that have become the center of the digital self.

Smartphones are not that old as a device class: Since 2007 - the iPhone was introduced on January 9th - just 14 years have passed, a veritable teenage age even compared to computers. However, it is questionable whether smartphones will dominate the personal electronic device market for another 15 years.

The development accelerated particularly in the first two decades of the 21st century. Smartwatches and smart headphones are now established as device classes, and only within six years, an incredibly short time if you measure them against the standards of the 20th century.

This development will continue to rotate in the coming decades, sometimes slower, sometimes faster - depending on how quickly the clever minds solve the problems at hand.

The End Is Near - Because Quantum Physics Doesn't Lie

One of the biggest problems in computer development is the imminent end of Moore's Law: In the sixties, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore observed that the number of circuits on a given size chip doubles every 12 to 18 months. He extrapolated this observation into the future and outlined how the economy, the military, and technology can develop further if this doubling takes place over several decades.

However, the density of transistors on the chip has its limits: At the atomic level, i.e. with the chips as thick as an atom, it is over. With the current 5-nanometer chips like those in iPhone 12 work, and with planned 2-nm production at Apple supplier TSMC, the industry is scratching the fundamental limit for chip development.

Silicon, from which modern chips are made, has an atomic radius of just under 0.1 nanometers, or a radius of 0.2 nm, which is more decisive when it comes to the question of how close one can bring structures in a semiconductor together.

In short, the chips as the basis for all electronic devices are becoming ever smaller and more powerful, and this development should continue for at least five years. There are already some tricks like Apple's dedicated chip areas that are only intended for specific tasks such as machine learning, or parallel computation with several cores, which guarantee increases in performance even if the basic chip uses the same number of transistors.

But what do you do with ever smaller and ever more powerful chips that will come onto the market in the next few years? Apple itself gave an answer, or an attempt at an answer, in its interview with CNN: The entire development of the iMac is based on the idea of ​​making the computer disappear.

The user should not worry about where and how he has saved his data, but rather have it where he is currently after retrieving it. The iMac reflects this idea because this is actually just a good display according to its design, the computer in it takes up a negligibly small area.

It may be difficult to imagine, but the same chips are already working in an Apple Watch and an M1 iMac, only with a different number of cores and a different power supply.

When The Smartphone Disappears, What Remains?

Apple is following in the footsteps of past generations with his idea of ​​making the computer disappear: While the first lightbulb or the first telephone was a topic of conversation and worth a visit to the neighbors, nowadays in everyday life the lighting is not even on the physical switches, but reduced to Siri shortcuts, i.e. voice commands without any physical interaction.

If the smartphone is not disassembled into its components, but rather existing concepts, it is a device with which the user receives, creates, processes, and forwards the information. In principle, we already have a device that takes on the basic functions of receiving, analyzing, and forwarding information - the Apple Watch.

The smartwatch is responsible for the long lists of evaluations in the health app. If we replace the motherboard of the iPhone with the Apple Watch, which is already not that far-fetched, two problems remain, the information input, i.e. replacement for the touch screen or the keyboard and the display.

Displays Everywhere - And The Computer On The Body

The first smartphones with a folding display are already available, but these do not adequately solve the problem of flexible display of content. Basically, a user wants their content to be presented in a way that suits the current situation they are in: in a public place as discreetly as possible, at home in the highest possible quality, at work as required by the current task.

The two sizes of the foldable smartphone solve only a tiny part of the problem. You can think of this matter from the other side: What if we don't have to carry any displays with us in the future because we always find a suitable solution where we need it?

The home television with the smart chip or smart console becomes a display wallpaper, which gets the data from the user's mobile motherboard and from the cloud. At work and in the home office, we already have monitors that are just waiting for notebooks to be plugged in.

And on the way, either Siri in the ear will provide us with the information we need at the moment, or, when the time comes, a smart contact lens will enrich what we have seen with the extended information.

There are already rumors that Apple is working on AR glasses, but let's not kid ourselves - this is just a stopgap until the chips are so small that some circuits fit on the lens and at least the task the representation can take over. That would be enough if our mobile motherboard does the rest - but at the size of the Apple Watch.

The input of information is somewhat more problematic - smartphones and tablets have established themselves precisely for the reason that they have abolished the last abstract hurdle of a keyboard or mouse and immediately switched to touching them with the fingers.

This is not a problem with pure texts: With WhatsApp, there are more spoken messages than texts, not even fingers and a corresponding display are required for typing, but only your own voice. Siri Shortcuts also shows where the apps or their development can go: Instead of navigating via a graphical surface and pressing abstract buttons on the display, this graphical surface has been largely abolished.

The tasks that used to require a few dozen taps and confirmations are processed with a single (voice) command. Most apps can disappear into the depths of artificial intelligence on the chip, or they can be handled by a clever assistant, no display is required here.

Do The iPhone 13 And Galaxy S22 Have To Fear?

No, smartphones have become an integral part of everyday life in the last decade and will remain so for a few years or a few decades to come. It is already clear that technology is becoming more and more personalized and miniaturized. What Apple kicked off with the Apple Watch won't go away.

Smart headphones are the next level, smart contact lenses are even smaller and closer to the body, but such solutions are not yet on the market. At some point, the conspiracy's greatest fear will be confirmed, and we will carry nano-chips directly in our bodies - albeit voluntarily. This is not yet the case with the current vaccination campaigns.