It seems a lot longer, but it was just 11 years ago (2007) that Apple launched the first smartphone. Sure, we had had business-focused phones like the Blackberry before. These phones aimed to give users the same kind of functionality that they had come to expect from their laptops. The iPhone was just the latest in a long line of devices that attempted to make computing both portable and accessible. Prior to the iPhone, manufacturers had had little success in this regard. The demand for a portable computer was clearly there, but no one could seem to get it right.
Today, phone manufacturers have another problem – customers love big screens, When the screen of your phone stretches from edge to edge, all phones look the same at a glance. If you’re Apple, you don’t just want people to buy iPhones, you want other people to know that their friends are buying iPhones. Apple’s notch approach was supposed to set the iPhone X apart from other edge-to-edge screens. Naturally, the rest of the market just copied the notch. Now we have a whole generation of phones doing it.
But there are other ways for smartphones to set themselves apart from the rest of the market. As well as giving phones distinct physical features, it is also possible to sell a phone on the basis of hardware and software capabilities. The following emerging trends are likely to underpin the next wave of heavily redesigned smartphones.
Foldable Displays
For years, Samsung has been teasing us with its foldable displays. It now appears close to making its smartphone-cum-tablet a reality. This device would function as a smartphone, but could then be folded out to something tablet sized. Foldable electronics aren’t exactly easy, especially if they’re to be durable enough for use in a smartphone, but it is the display that presents the real challenge.
Not only does the display need to be able to deal with the physical stress of regular use, the areas of screen that actually bend need to maintain their vibrancy and accuracy in spite of microscopic stresses that will occur. One of the hottest areas of material physics in recent years has been self-healing screens. As the largest, and by far most advanced, display maker in the world, it wouldn’t be surprising to see both technologies bought together.
Like many innovations in smartphones on the horizon, at the heart of our capabilities regarding displays is materials science. We are now able to produce industrial polymers and other materials to fulfil very specific purposes. This opens up new worlds of possibility to engineers. You can view here a list of industrial polymers to give you an idea of just how many of them there are.
Hydrophobic Screen Coating
There’s nothing more annoying than trying to use a touchscreen in the rain. Some of the best smartphones out there today are already using a variety of techniques to encourage water to slide off screens, while also reducing the number of false presses detected because of water.
Capacitive touchscreens work by carrying a miniscule electronic charge from your skin to the screen. Where the screen registers a charge, it detects a press. We all know that water and electricity don’t mix. Even the tiny amounts involved in using your touchscreen can be conducted by water and lead to false inputs.
In order to solve this problem, display manufacturers have been turning to nature. There are certain species of plants whose leaves are completely hydrophobic. This means that they repel water. By replicating this effect on a phone screen, any rain, or most other liquids) would run straight off without leaving any residue. By simply turning your phone upside down, all the water that was on it would fall straight off.
Goodbye Headphone Jack
This is by far a worse trend than the notch. Like the trend of ruining your phone’s biggest selling point by cutting a chunk out of it to facilitate selfies, which is what the notch is, the removal of the headphone jack is a slap in the face to everyone. It shaves millimeters off the size of phones which are already absurdly thin. It also allegedly improves the water-resistance capabilities of devices. Manufacturers may well be moving towards a waterproof design that allows smartphones to be used underwater freely.
We are some way away from that point though! For those of us who really care about audio quality, Bluetooth doesn’t cut it. Worse still, those of us who are sticklers for quality have already dropped a lot of money on a pair of quality headphones. To have to buy a new pair of Bluetooth headphones, ones which can’t even approach the quality we’re used to, represents a big spend.
And yes, adapters do exist, but any product that depends on adapters has failed in its design.
Fingerprint Scanner Beneath the Screen
This is a feature that Samsung and Apple both wanted to include in their flagship models last year. While we have the technology to do this, it’s difficult to produce accurate enough results to satisfy the engineers involved. In order for an area of screen to be used as a fingerprint scanner, it needs to be a significantly higher resolution than the rest of the display. One day, we may well see the development of screens that have a high enough overall resolution to allow the entire screen to detect the finger on it. This would mean that only the owner of the device would be able to use it. This would offer an unprecedented level of security for smartphones.
The world of consumer electronics moves fast and decisively. How many of us thought Apple had lost the plot when they revealed their removal of the headphone jack? Or when they announced the removal of the fingerprint scanner altogether? It’s hard to say to what degree the market is being led by consumers, and how many of the current trends are the result of manufacturers telling consumers what they want.
