FUTURE GENERATION OF SMARTPHONE
5.1 Technology Outbreaks
As the name suggests, the smartphone is capable of doing more things than the mobile phone,
it offers additional, essential business functions such as web browsing, multimedia
entertainment, games, etc. - like mini computers but small enough to fit in your pocket. Smart
phones have appeared on the market for nearly two decades ago as an alternative to mobile
phones which perform basic functions to enable two-way communication only by text or call.
The smart phones of today have different scalability including the camera lens in building high
quality, portable applications that support productivity, video-streaming and connectivity that
allows millions to remain connected while on the move. And customers have the right to expect
many more breakthrough in technologies in the future. One of them could be augmented reality
‘Augmented reality" or AR refers to what we perceive through our senses (usually sight)
strengthened through the use of the computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video,
images and GPS data. AR makes more information become available to the user by combining
machine data properties with what we see in real life.
Using the camera on your phone, you can
point it where it "live" to get an overlay information about where you can find nearest place for
example
Next is flexible screen, users can bend smartphones in every possible ways they want. Screens
can be folded and unfolded, all thanks to Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) technology.
This paper-thin screen can even project future-features-smart-phones/ from both sides of the
screen, so you can show pictures or videos to your friend on one side while using the other as a
control. Or maybe 3Dscreens and holograms may become the next big thing. Smartphones may
provide us with high quality screen resolution but customers want more. Combining 3D and
hologram seems to be a great idea for those who enjoy watching films on smartphones (Michael
Poh 2012).
29
5.2 Challenges
It is undeniable that one of the biggest challenges that mobile operators have to face nowadays
is the increasing demand for better capacity. Wireless devices are driving data to an alarming
rate which puts a massive strain on networks. A lot of smartphones now have 3G feature,
however there are still some problems such as slow internet access, delay and interrupt in
downloading or streaming. 3G is of course much better than traditional 2G, but mobile operators
have to find ways to increase the efficiency of network architectures.
Thanks to great advance in technology, smartphones are now very powerful with many features.
But what’s the point when the battery life is still an unsolved riddle, especially when users use
4G or any heavy application. Recently application developers start to face a new challenge
called fragmentation. The more diverse the selection of mobile devices becomes, the more
difficult it is for app and game developers to produce a product that works on every device. This
due to the facts that there are many operating systems and each one has different requirements
and different policies.
Another big issue for mobile operators is security problems. It is so easy to hack a smartphone
nowadays, even IOS operating system which is well known for high security can be hacked and
jailbreak within a day. Others operating system such as Android is considered “too open”, users
can lost a lot of valuable data they save in their phones. Hackers can gain access through many
ways and reveal user personal information just through a “harmless” application. Not to
mention, there are many people choose to pay online through mobile payments applications.
These has become one of the biggest challenge for users and operators.