How smartphones will transform (2024)

By 2025, the smartphone will no longer occupy the center of our digital lifestyles as its excess weight metaphorically crushes it from our existence. But, fear not. The smartphone isn’t going away, rather will re-invent itself as a plethora of emerging edge devices assumes many of its features, functions and use cases.

Why the tipping point?

Today, your smartphone is everything from camera, fitness tracker, and store locator to personal banker, navigator, travel companion and shopping cart. You can also ask it any question you have… about anything you want to know. I’ve heard rumors that it also makes phone calls.

Given its genie-like qualities we hypnotically gaze at our phones while walking, driving, eating, drinking, exercising, watching TV — and yes, even during excretion (you know who you are). But, while your phone is the most innovative gadget you’ve ever owned, you are unwittingly compromising its performance by adding unused features and content onto its already overloaded state.

Smartphones are overloading our cognitive abilities.

Moore’s law doesn’t apply to the human ability to process information. And, there’s no Weight Watchers for phones, hence the experience is either heavy — or heavier, a state also known as excess cognitive load, which measures the mental effort required to achieve a result. The lower the ratio (of effort to result) the more effective the task. Take CES, or Customer Effort Score, which is used to assess if the effort required to do business with a brand is worth it.

In CES terms, the effort of locating your phone, unlocking it, finding the function you want, then invoking it — is starting to exceed the value of the associated result. Even with all the extreme integration taking place, we often struggle to transfer the results of one use case into another.

During all of this, we’re interrupted with alerts, messages, ads, multiple ring tones, questions and warnings that our phone’s OS will update automatically tonight, but only if it is connected to wall-power. Throughout the day, our phones often fail us due to inadequate authentication, wrong usernames, incorrect passwords, lack of WiFi access or my personal favorite, “try back later.”

Increasing loads are being distributed to more suitable devices.

Too much time is being spent managing the phone’s increasingly annoying attitude versus “just do what I want.” As a result, the phone’s ability to scale or take on new automation has reached a ceiling, encouraging us to look elsewhere as we turn to smartwatches, smart speakers, smart glasses, smart clothing and our interactive automobiles to take on the excess load — a trend that will rapidly increase as new edge devices come online. For example, your refrigerator could soon become a focal point for helping you achieve the first level of Maslow’s needs hierarchy.

For the first time, mobile phone growth is in the single digits.

This trend that will surely continue through the end of 2020 when smartphones reach 2.4 billion users. Contrast this with the 16% projected CAGR of generalist devices, the Internet of Things (IoT) and other endpoint devices that will collectively represent 20 billion units by 2021 (See Figure 1).

Figure 1. The inverse relationship between smartphone growth and that of consumer IoT. Source: Gartner

Even the providers are moving smartphone functions to devices that offer less friction, as voice, gesture and hand waves augment mice, keyboards and touch. In many instances, interaction is invisible.

For example, simply standing on a smart scale returns BMI and other metrics such as body fat, muscle mass and bone density (no need to ask). After consulting a heart app, the results are automatically transmitted to our health records or to our physician. If our heart trends toward something dangerous, loved ones or hospitals are notified. As your home senses your automobile’s arrival, it automatically turns on your air conditioner, oven or evening playlist. In an era of ubiquitous computing — our devices become mind readers.

This shifting of use cases will accelerate as smartphone friction intensifies.

Today’s trends form a familiar chapter in the annals of technology history. The minicomputer offloaded mainframes for individual office applications, just as PCs and laptops moved personal productivity tools away from the minicomputer.

Now, wearables, such as Fitbit, are more effective monitors of cardio and other wellness metrics than smartphones. Smart speakers and specialized VPAs (virtual personal assistants) are proving to be better at helping us manage the household, teach us French or seamlessly play music than the overworked phone. Moreover, we’ll use many microphones and listen to many speakers (versus one phone, one speaker). As a result, we’ll interact with our smartphones less often as this trend ripples across both homes and office.

Many of these new use cases offer a better pairing of the experience and its natural device. The connected car for example, is creating new shopping and insurance models. Kitchen appliances offer new ways of purchasing food and experimenting with new recipes. The connected home delivers new levels of security using cameras, facial recognition and smartwatch alerts. Smart glasses will provide better navigation aids as we walk through a new city.

All of these examples would be either too cumbersome or simply unachievable with the smartphone.

AI is the new Calvary

In the film, Idiocracy, Mike Judge envisions a world where people are so bombarded and overloaded with information, news, resources and aids — that they simply throw up their hands and surrender to a new age of idiocy. As the super-idiots assume power, the scenario grows worse leaving society open to autocracy. However, in Judge’s scenario, a benevolent dictator emerges (played by Luke Wilson) who inspires people to start thinking for themselves. Hollywood loves the happy ending.

But what Judge didn’t predict: a big dose of artificial intelligence to help the idiots deal with the oceans of notifications, processes, choices and ultimate effort, not to mention things like neuroprosthetics (embedded chips) that turn human and machine into one (as explored by Ray Kurzweil in his book, The Singularity). But, augmenting our brains with smart chips is a discussion for a different day. To see how this world might look, check out the movie, Upgrade.

For now, we can expect ….

…an acceleration in the distribution of smartphone capabilities to other devices to fulfill certain user tasks more effectively. For example:

Wearables offer more secure, frictionless ways to authenticate and verify identity as iris and gait recognition join methods such as Apple Pay and Fitbit NFC-based solutions to innovate how we pay for things. Fitbit Pay for example, lets users add credit and debit cards to certain Fitbit devices for contactless payments even while traveling internationally.

Smartwatches are better equipped to capture body movements (Google’s gesture-recognition project Soli, which created Motion Sense, is one example). Smartwatches and bands in general will continue to dominate mobile gesture control.

Today, VPAs represent 40 percent of mobile interactions. VPA-enabled speakers (and to some extent, smartwatches) are good at communicating alerts and notifications, especially those enhanced with advanced analytics. Then there’s Samsung Gear VR which presents notifications in a virtual reality experience. VPAs have also improved in their ability to understand and learn user needs making them a primary choice for an increasing number of use cases.

As smartphones start to crush from their own weight (thanks to our overdependence upon them) they also perpetuate cognitive overload. As a result, the smartphone is reaching the end of its current lifecycle. Smartphones won’t go away, rather they will assume a new role at the network’s edge.

AI techniques such as machine learning and predictive analytics reduce effort and increase the quality of user interaction, regardless of which device is used. As a result, a new type of smart ecosystem is emerging as new plug-and-play devices relieve smartphones from their role as uber device.

Conversational platforms and wearables will increasingly assume certain user cases such as payments, authentication and notifications.