Will Cloud Disaggregate the iPhone?

Well any smartphone for that matter! The question I am really asking is what kind of personal device will you be having in 2025? Will it be a 'super' iPhone type of device or will it be something different? iPhone was a big disruption to the phone industry when it was launched and if you all remember it changed the landscape forever. Nokia Phones, the giant back then, did not see it all coming and lost their footing. The rest is history.

The phone/tablet/laptop have become an integral part of your life; personal as well as professional. Let us talk today about how the phone or your personal device is likely to be disaggregated, virtualized and cloudified! What if I tell you that the only functions that be an integral part of the phone are - a)mobile connectivity b)location c)personal identity. What if all else can be disaggregated or virtualized? Read on to find more. Please share your comments whether you agree or disagree.

As cloud come closer to you and becomes a more integral part of your life, it is likely to take over some of key functions that the phone offers and will add more flexibility in the way we consume content or interact with others.

Now we will examine the key components that make up the phone today, and how each of them is likely to be transformed.

The display: This is the biggest part of the phone and has been the key focus area of development in the last few years. Large displays, covering every inch of the physical real estate of the phone are in demand. In fact, Samsung had a model, where the display even covered the edge. The display is where you watch content and have your video calls. 

But the future cannot be limited to one device, with 2020 and the future of work changing to a hybrid approach, it is now expected that AR, VR and Mixed Reality will start becoming an integral part of work life. The new things that we are talking about are Holoportation and Microsoft Mesh. If you are struggling to understand the differences between all these terms and the value that each offers to you, watch this informative video.

The phone screen is too small even for regular video experience and multiple people use screen mirroring software to project the phone screen onto TV or even Laptop. Also a video call falls a lot short of the experience of talking to a real person. PORTL has released a new "Holoportation" device that allows anyone with a camera and white screen to project their presence elsewhere. Look at the video below to learn more about it.

We need all combination of wearables (google glasses, VR Headsets, Microsoft HoloLens etc.) that help you get the immersive 3D experience. These are likely to continue to grow. In fact majority of the Fortune 500 organizations have purchased the HoloLens and are looking for ways to integrate these into their business processes during the pandemic. They hope to improve customer and employee experiences and productivity as they embark on the hybrid approach with a much higher focus on Work from Home.

HoloMeeting, a UK based organization is investing millions of pounds to create technology that will revolutionize business interactions and personalize previously remote experiences. They want to make interacting with remote users to become as natural as face-to-face communication. You can read more about it here.

While these are great, people have already started to think about even better display mechanisms which give you freedom from face hugging devices but still provide you with an immersive experience. Please have a look at this TED Talk to learn more about No-Headset Virtual Monitor.

So, the fact is that you will be interacting with different content, in a variety of different ways and through a variety of different devices. You would want to be able to connect to any of the devices depending on how you plan to connect with others. As such this piece of the phone needs to be separated from the device. The users should be able to use the device / display / screen of their choice. There is also a possibility of accessing the power of Internet without the screens, listen to the following TED talk to get some ideas on the direction of such research.

User Interface: The screen is also the User Interface. This is how you access applications and personalize your experience. But do you think you will continue to type, touch or swipe at a screen to interact with content, applications or people? I believe most of you have already started speaking to your phones / TVs / Computers, courtesy Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, Cortana and more and more devices seem to be going into this direction. They have come a long way in terms of speech recognition and making things - touch free. Look at this video to just have a glance at where we are in terms of the abilities of some such platforms.

There is still a lot that can improve in the voice assistants but they can already do a lot including accessing information from the internet, from within the apps as well setting and controlling the apps too. This is likely to keep getting better. But you must remember one thing, most of these assistants draw their power from the cloud and are integrated into the device. Today we have virtually one assistant per device, but I believe that in future, as part of the devices move into the cloud and as we get always on-always connected devices, we can have just one assistant for all our devices.

Then there is gesture control, How many of you have experienced a challenge in changing the music channel while driving a car? Even touch screens require us to take the eye sight away from the road and then read the text / find right location screen to touch. Many cars have embedded push button controls in the steering wheel. Have a look at this video from BMW to see what may be possible.

Gesture control works hand in hand with AR, VR, Mixed reality and is used in many industries already. We do not use any traditional touch screens in those cases. Now the gesture control is coming to our homes. Please see this video about a smart desk to see some simple but effective applications of gesture control.

Google phones Pixel 4 have great features for gesture recognition and they use some type of radar technology to sense gestures even through minor barriers such as clothing. You can control the device even if it is in your pocket. Researchers have come up with a better radar technology that will make it easy to recognize even small and unique gestures. Please have a look at this video to know more about it.

If you are interested in knowing more about 9 devices that show a lot of promise in this direction, please read this article by Gadget Flow. I believe that with all this progress, you will soon be able to use gestures and voice to communicate with devices, just like you do with other human beings. We now have devices that can recognize your mood and understand what you really mean, without punching buttons or touching a screen. Plus Covid-19 has made us all, a little vary of touching surfaces.

Then there is also the mind control! watch this fascinating video to know more.

Video Processing: Whether it is gaming or video calls or content that you are watching, you need to process the 2d/3d/more immersive content for the consumption of the end user. The problem is that the rate at which the content is becoming more richer and complex, is much higher than the speed at which the power of end devices is increasing. Also you cannot afford to change from one high end costly device to the next one, every time a new app or new content or a new game is launched that your current device cannot handle. Plus this also leaves a gap between haves and have nots. The people who cannot afford the costly handheld devices, gaming consoles will be deprived of the experience. Also consider all the firepower sitting at the edge, utilized only for a fraction of the time.

Google Stadia and Microsoft's Project xCloud and NVIDIA's GEFORCE Now all plan to use the power of cloud to provide great gaming experience to everyone despite the device capability or screen size. They plan to overcome the hurdles posed by older or cheaper phones / devices and want to direct the consumer spending to the games! “Stadia is free. The platform is free, multiplayer is free, you can get games how you want to get games,” says Stadia vice president and product chief John Justice. Watch this quick video to learn more about Stadia.

With always-on connectivity, video processing will move to cloud and the phone's processor need not play a special role in this. All you need is an access to a screen and a screen driver! And bear in mind, it need not be a screen of a phone or tablet or laptop, it could be a VR headset or a holographic projector or the mirror in your bathroom.

Content Creation / Content Capture: The phone today also double sup as your camera, (do not forget the front facing camera, we need it for selfies! and the Video calls!). This Camera is a great thing for sure, but does this have to be a part of the phone? There are new ways of content capture coming to you already! What if you could capture exactly what you saw and post it online as you wished? Did you hear about Snapchat spectacles? Watch this quick video to learn more.

There are phones, but then there are specialty cameras that you may want to connect with seamlessly, a Go-Pro, a Drone Capture, a Security Camera etc.. you may want to connect with any camera on demand and be able to capture content the way you like it. What if you were not limited to the camera on the phone? What if all your cameras could be accessible to you based on your proximity just like the Bluetooth speakers? We need more flexibility in capturing or creating content. I believe that though a camera will remain attached to the phone, it may not remain the exclusive camera available to the phone. We need more Bluetooth cameras like the Snapchat Spectacles.

Content Storage: This is problem for any phone, the amount of content we tend to capture, makes any size of local memory feel small. Almost everyone has cloud storage. For two reasons, first - to limit the amount of memory you need on the phone, and second - to get access to the content from any device that you are logged in to. With always-on connectivity and edge cloud access, the local storage will be limited to instant caching capability and most of the storage will move out of the device. The storage is so central to us that now we have products that can make a personal cloud storage, watch this video to learn more about a personal cloud storage by WD.

Mobile Network Connectivity: I can say with confidence that this function of the mobile phone is not going away, it it central to what makes it really mobile. This is your connection into the internet and the cloud and the apps and the services. Every person will probably invest in two or more connections, one mobile, one fixed and other mobile or fixed!! You may end up having multiple mobile connections, a Wi-fi access point for your car, a 5G access point for your home apart from the fixed line, multiple IoT connections for various devices that you own and use. You can probably guess where I am going, many of the devices that you use today include an inbuilt mobile network access and quite a few of them do not have a screen or a camera or storage for various apps and stuff. Mobile connectivity is essential, rest is not.

Identity / Location / Personalization: This is the last and the most important function your phone does for you. It is a personal device. A message sent from it has your personal stamp. It validates your location and the identification through face recognition or fingerprint or a password. It works as the token device for dual factor authentication. It is the device you use to validate your login into other applications. The phone is an extension of yourself in this regards. It tells the world when you are at your home location and when you are travelling. It is how apps track you and deliver services to you more efficiently. It is in fact your virtual presence in the connected world of the internet. This function cannot and should not be separated from the phone. A physical token that is tied up to your present location provides a secure way to consume services.

So what will the phone of future look like?

I believe, it could be a wearable like a watch or a piece of jewellery, with always-on mobile connectivity, location info, access to a web-based smart assistant like Google Assistant, Alexa or Siri, an in-built camera that can help you authenticate using facial recognition, a radar that will help it understand your gestures, advanced blue-tooth type functionality to detect and connect with all nearby content creation and consumption devices, such as screens, cameras, HoloLens, Google Glasses, speakers, joy sticks, game consoles, IoT enabled devices such as coffee machines etc. It will enable you to personalize your experience across any such interface and provide instant access to all your apps and content that reside in the cloud. The phone will be disaggregated and virtualized. It has started happening! The Cloud will be where the bulk of your phone will go to!

Note: The opinions expressed in this article are my personal opinions and have no connection to my present or previous employments.