Technologies you might find in the smartphone of 2030

Technology often evolves at breakneck pace, so it tends to surprise us when progress is more leisurely.

In the last decade, cars evolved from passive vehicles to semi-autonomous machines, capable of braking when they detect a pedestrian and parking themselves parallel to the kerb.

Our homes welcomed the Internet of Things, powering everything from Alexa and Hive to motion-detecting cameras which record night-vision footage directly to the cloud.

By comparison, smartphone evolution has been more modest.

Put 2010’s flagship iPhone 4 into the hands of a modern Apple customer, and they’d have no difficulty navigating their way around the largely-unchanged iOS interface.

The first-generation Samsung Galaxy S also launched in 2010, offering front and rear cameras and powered by an early version of Android.

And although it was 2012 before 4G launched in the UK, overseas networks were already giving us an idea of the speeds we could expect post-3G.

As such, today’s smartphones represent an evolution on their 2010 ancestors, rather than a revolution.

So can we expect greater progress with the smartphone of 2030?

Material world

Perhaps the biggest change affecting the design of future smartphones centres on flexible screen and chassis materials.

This is already allowing handsets to fold out from a relatively compact footprint, making them easier to transport than today’s unyielding plastic oblongs.

Wraparound screens will offer tablet-style displays when unfolded, despite retaining diminutive notification windows akin to the reborn Motorola Razr.

The endlessly shrinking nature of internal device components should also support smaller and lighter handsets, reversing the current trend.

The iPhone 11 is 50 per cent heavier than the 4, and while it more than justifies this weight gain through additional specifications, heavier isn’t better from a consumer perspective.

Five alive

A combination of lockdown and legal action has prevented the UK’s 5G network expanding in the way many consumers had hoped.

There is debate around the need for a sixth-generation mobile connectivity standard, considering 5G offers enough bandwidth to meet everyone’s needs.

It’s also argued 5G will be fast enough to do anything we require with minimal buffering or latency – the delay between an online action being instructed and responded to.

By 2030, the UK should have a comprehensive 5G network, though signal strength will undoubtedly remain weak in remote areas like mountains.

No port in a storm

We’re likely to see wireless connectivity rolled out across the smartphone of 2030, replacing headphone sockets and charging ports with Bluetooth and inductive charging.

You probably won’t need to insert a SIM card, or plug a device into a computer to transfer files, thanks to technologies like NFC.

Even traditional design elements like front-facing cameras will vanish, replaced with lenses hidden under a layer of screen pixels which turn clear as the camera is activated.

Speaking of cameras, expect the smartphone of 2030 to incorporate 8K telephoto lenses designed to reproduce flawless images on compatible TV/monitor screens.

Data will be seamlessly cast from phone to screen, while smartphone integration into vehicles should be simpler than today’s clunky cabled solutions.

More and more functions will be voice-controlled, making the need for new technologies like holographic keyboards redundant.

And adoption of LiFi technology could even see conventional WiFi networks replaced by line-of-sight light communications – an order of magnitude faster and with far superior safety.

Phones won’t change beyond recognition, then. But they’re likely to evolve further in the next decade than they did over the last ten years.