The Mobile Phone In 2012

2012 is only 3 years away. If the world does end in December of 2012, let’s stop and think about how much our smartphones will have evolved. (disclaimer: I do not think that the world will end in 2012 and I believe that it will just be the year 2000 over again- nothing will happen.)

Snapdragon and Tegra will be old, slow platforms
In three years, the cutting edge mobile phone processing platforms of today will be considered slow. In fact, a phone built on Tegra or Snapdragon will be laughably sluggish. (sure they will be the same speed that they are today) but we will think that they are slow because superior products will be present in the market.
So what kind of speeds are we talking about? 2Ghz at the very least. Also expect dual core, quad core, or some new architecture for processors. It all has to do with Moore’s Law. But then again there is that pesky Page’s Law to spoil the fun. Don’t expect a better processor to ensure that the user interface and programs will never lag on your phone. They still will, despite the 1GB+ RAM in your phone.

LTE and WiMAX everywhere to blow your mind
Chances are that if you are reading this article, you have a high-speed internet connection that is reliably fast at your home. Now imagine your home’s broadband speed: but everywhere, on your phone. Want to watch a movie right now? Download it in under a minute. You don’t have to use WiFi. (naturally, data usage caps will increase over 3 years to allow this). But what kind of quality of media playback will you have on your phone…

720p OLED screens are common
Take your time watching that movie, you will enjoy it in 720p on your crisp OLED screen. But wait, did you really want to stare at a 3-something-inch screen for two hours?

Pico Projectors Built-in
This is more speculative than proven standards that will be on the market… but I fully expect the majority of smartphones to have built-in Pico projectors. The Pico projector technology is rapidly evolving right now.

Beautiful user interfaces
Each generation will build on the last. The usability, convenience, and eye-candy of every modern smartphone operating system will all be drastically improved. Expect the verison of Windows Mobile in 3 years to have a standard UI on-par with (or better than) the rest of the competition. Oh and Flash/Silverlight will be avaliable in a useable way.

5mp camera will be the bare-minimum
Never worry about buying a separate camera- your phone will have the goods. At least a 5mp camera on every smartphone? Yes. Better pictures, better optics? Yes yes!

All the storage you will need
Expect 250GB+ storage solutions in your phone and if that isn’t enough, don’t forget about the cloud.

THE CLOUD
All of your stuff, accessible from everywhere, anytime. cool. 
Excellent Facebook integration? Why do you even ask… of course!

And yet…
We will not be satisfied. We will complain. Something will be wrong, and no phone will have all the features that you want because you will always want more more more! That is the nature of the human-technology relationship. It is a bright future though. Just don’t expect to be able to ‘beam’ yourself instantly to the Moon with your smartphone within 3 years….