What will your mobile phone do for you in the future?

The phone has become an extension of our own body and we can no longer live without it.

The phone is the first thing we use in the morning and we will not separate from it until we go to bed, many hours later. In a few years, this mobile device has become an essential element in our lives and forecasts indicate that its use will continue to grow in the future.

IDC Research Consultancy estimates that, by 2023, 1,520 million mobile phones will be in use worldwide, with an average annual growth rate of 1.6% in the 2018-2023 period.

5G technology will play a key role in the short and medium-term since in four years it will account for 26.3% of total sales. That will imply a profound and radical change in all areas of our daily activity because its possibilities are extraordinary.

But let’s not anticipate what is to come and go step by step. Today, 80% of the world’s population has a mobile phone, and more than a billion units are smartphones.

Currently, we check our phones an average of 150 times a day and nine out of ten people are unable to separate more than a meter away from their device.

What do we use it for? For almost everything: to listen to music, catch up with news, photograph and record videos, check the weather, play video games, search for traffic information, locate directions on maps, plan a trip, manage our daily agenda, communicate through social networks, read and send emails, watch TV, do all kinds of work such as banking and administrative tasks, shop, work, and so on.

The list is endless and it shows that today the phone, beyond its traditional use, serves almost everything. It is a tool that makes life easier for us and brings people closer than ever.

Thanks to the technological advances that are yet to come, many of them associated with 5G technology, its possibilities will multiply in the coming years. Aspects related to augmented reality and virtual reality will be part of our day to day lives.

All this will be possible thanks to higher speeds, lower latency and the greater capacity that 5G implies and that the Internet of Things (IoG) will develop to unsuspected limits.

The IoG will allow for an ultra-connected world in which autonomous driving, remote surgery and telemedicine, immersive games and industrial process automation will be deployed.

Today, all this sounds like science fiction, but it will be a reality in a very short time. Thanks to the placement of sensors in our homes we can know through our mobile, for example, if the temperature in our house is cold, and connect the heating through the smartphone.

We will know if our refrigerator is running empty and certain foods need to be replenished. We will even have sensors in our own body that will inform us in real time of possible health problems.

In some ways, this is what happens with smartwatches: they measure the hours of sleep, rest times, the frequency with which we drink water, the exercise we carry out … If we make responsible use of the phones themselves.

Exactly the same will happen with mobile phones, which will be even more integrated with almost unexpected areas of our lives. They will be able, for example, to detect spoiled food or to supply medicines. To some extent, technological advances will turn the smartphone into one more appendix of our body.

With just one click, we will manage our medical consultations, we will know what exercise we should do and how long. We will control our own well-being but we will also know in a matter of seconds what are the traffic jams in the city and what alternative of transportation is better to get around.

The same will happen in the field of our economy: a mobile provides control of our bank accounts, we can make transactions immediately, quickly and conveniently; It is possible to pay for or buy any product at any moment.

In short, mobile phones will provide a gigantic universe of possibilities that help us to better manage our life, our health and our time.