One of the reasons I’m not headed to CES this year, besides that they’re charging media to attend and I don’t really want to be in Vegas in a pandemic, is that the past few years has been incremental improvements in things I watch. Earbuds are a little better, phones are a little stronger, batteries are slightly more… progress.
TL;DR – Paul wonders what’s next and doesn’t have many ideas on it.
When I started with GoodAndEVO, progress was amazing. Phones that could reasonably browse the web, flashing ROMs, apps that worked on iOS and Android, new uses for sensors, phones that could last 5+ hours in actual use, periscope, video chatting, live streaming, recording video and posting it online edited while outdoors, and all these things from science fiction vomited up within the space of a couple of years.
But for the past few, it’s “oh, that’s slightly better now.” Phone news tends to be heavy on whoever’s paying for their phone news to be out and center, the hype machine has to pay to get the infinitesimally better battery life even mentioned.
And I’m sure there’s a whole lot of innovation going on, I mean the chips that are coming out are absurd what they can do, but what the end product is going to be to a consumer is yet another slightly faster square of black metal and glass that someone puts Facebook on and turns into a clunker.
We’ve got thermal imaging, magnetic sensors, 120MP CMOS sensors with telephoto lenses, range finders, NFC, all sorts of goodies that were pushed to the bounds years ago… but what else can you jam into a phone, accessory, etc?
Things I’ve been thinking of in the gadget/phone realm that need to come out include RADAR, echolocation, electrical sensing/vision (see wiring in walls,) wireless charging (room based, not Qi,) always listening assistant as opposed to triggered, point to point cell network sharing for emergencies, blood pressure monitoring via camera (it’s doable now evidently from the press releases I’ve been getting,) 3D (yeah, I’d like to see that again,) a personal assistant that tells you what you need to do when to achieve your goals based on what your body’s reporting, constant local recording and transcribing when plugged in, plate testing for environmental contaminants (pollen, cat dander, COVID-19,) – you know, your basic Tricorder/Sonic Screwdriver sort of stuff.
Who knows… be interesting to see what comes out… hopefully some interesting things will be appearing this year.
