25 years ago I had my first PDA (a US Robotics Pilot 1000) and have seen incredible advancements in mobile technology ever since. Smartphone form factors stabilized on metal frames with glass back and front panels a few years ago. And with a particular focus on camera performance in 2021.
For many years we have witnessed the “megapixel race” in smartphone cameras. But most companies stuck with 12MP as the standard for smartphone photography. Algorithms and software intelligence were perfected in 2021, with Google and Apple taking computational photography to the next level. It’s great that smartphones help you take great photos, but there is a lot more to productivity in a smartphone than just taking photos.
Google released Android 12 at the end of 2021, while Apple introduced us to iOS 15. These two major updates provide a glimpse of what lies ahead in 2022. Our smartphones will finally start using AI, data and power. computing to do the heavy lifting without our constant interaction. And this by connecting more easily to others, and trusting our smartphones to play the role of personal assistants.
Google Android 12
Android 12 customizes colors and widgets so that your home experience is designed uniquely for you and isn’t the same as every other Android 12 user. Chat widget places the people who matter most to you. you directly on the home screen to help you log in and stay informed about them without much effort on your part.
We have also seen developments in Google’s applications to help you in a number of ways. For example, smart response suggestions make responding to emails faster because computing power is used to create responses based on your history and past interactions. Google Assistant and voice text input have improved the way you can find things and interact with people faster and in more situations.
Google search is also implemented deeper into the operating system with AppSearch, which can search for people, settings, music, photos, and more. This feature could change the way you interact with your phone. So instead of doing multiple taps and swipes to get to the app you want to use, you can just go in one place and skip lots of intermediate steps. Reducing the manual interactions we have with our phones is an important way to harness the power of the phone and refocus on the people and the real world around us.
Apple iOS 15
Apple has also taken steps to make your iPhone take on more tasks and make your life easier. The Focus option helps you set your time away from the phone, then gives you the option to share it with others so you won’t be interrupted. The improvements to FaceTime have been especially helpful in 2020, as people are working remotely and connecting through video more than ever before.
One thing we should have seen coming years ago is live text, which makes photo text easily actionable. With a picture of a real estate agent’s sign, you can call that agent, send them a message, or even search for directions for an address. You no longer need to switch from a photo to other messaging, telephony or mapping applications to act on the text of an image.
As Google has been doing for some time, Apple also offers the Visual Look Up feature, which lets you learn more about the different objects in the photos you take. I have spent many hours identifying flowers, trees, insects, and other objects using Google Lens.
And now ?
Google and Apple have made great strides in enabling our smartphones to do more for us in 2021 and using the vast amount of data companies collect to help us in our daily lives. As computing power continues to advance and our smartphones continue to collect data about our usage, machine learning and AI are expected to reduce the number of decisions we need to make every day. The average person makes over 35,000 decisions a day, and given the incredible power we now have in our hands, it’s clear that smartphones can make a lot of these decisions based entirely on data models. that the phones have collected.
As battery and display technology has plateaued, camera technology has advanced in such a way that photos from most devices are almost indistinguishable in terms of quality, the next step for smartphones is is to make sure these tools reduce our stress and take charge of the thousands of minor decisions we make every day.
In terms of hardware, Samsung has set the course for foldable technology and will continue to improve in this area, but there isn’t a lot of hardware innovation from other players in the smartphone industry.
What do you think will we see from smartphone makers in 2022?
Source: “ZDNet.com”