Smartphones old terms by 2030′ and then what?

The Android vs iOS battle will continue, but if there is one thing tech nerds can agree on, it is that the OG iPhone was a game changer.

When Steve Jobs unveiled the OG iPhone in January 2007, he not only introduced a new gadget but set the course for the next two decades of our digital lives.

However, experts believe that — as with all good things — the smartphone era might end and end soon.

World-renowned futurist and strategic foresight professor Alexander Manu, in a November 2023 interview said that every technology is fundamentally a bridge to the next technology.

“Every couple of years, we have something called ‘the beginning of the end’ where everybody has everything to move to the next level. Where are our fax machines? Our landlines?” Manu said.

The word “selfie” did not exist up until 2013 and the selfie stick was one of the best innovations of 2014 — where is it now though?

“People in the 80s had to redesign offices to accommodate computers because we needed to process words and then photocopy those processed words or store the data on a disk drive. All of this stuff was sold at Staples (an office supply retail company) or Business Depot as it was called. Those sections don’t exist in the store anymore. You had scanners, printers, fax machines and then they all disappeared,” Manu said.

Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark believes the next change could come as soon as 2030, with the arrival of 6G, the concept of smartphones would become obsolete.

“By then, the smartphone as we know it today will not be the most common interface. Many of these things will be built directly into our bodies,” Lundmark said during the 2022 World Economic Forum.

So, where to next?

Meta’s Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun has the same opinion to offer that the handheld devices of today will become obsolete soon. As per him, the future of mobile computing will be driven by augmented reality glasses.

“So, the computer will still be in our pocket, but we’ll talk to our glasses, or glasses will display content that will be overlaid over the real world. If you go to a foreign country, you don’t speak the language, you see a sign. The sign will be translated automatically and displayed in your augmented reality glasses,” he said.

This is also fair for him to say given the company’s latest innovation —  the Meta Ray-Ban Smart Glasses — which seems to be getting a more positive review from the industry compared to its previous two attempts with the Metaverse and the Quest VR headsets.

The company is also reportedly exploring the idea of AI-assisted earbuds with cameras.

If you were to ask the same question to Apple, the answer would most likely be its latest and greatest the Vision Pro. However, with its downsides — as few as they may be — even it feels like only a stepping stone. Then again, we thought iPods would last forever and here we are.

As Manu said, we already are at that convergence point with new emerging technology like mixed-reality headsets, smart rings, augmented reality glasses, the Neuralink chip or even the Humane AI pin, we are just waiting for the right moment to leap.