The list of what our cell phones can do grows every day. With a smartphone in hand, you can make a call, take a picture, check the weather, become mayor of your apartment building, go over flashcards for your midterm and check the Madison Metro schedule without getting up from your kitchen table. Several upcoming uses for phones are listed below, along with my best estimate of the date they will be widely accepted for use in smartphones in the United States.
Purchasing tools (2015)
Have you ever seen those credit cards that simply have to be waved near a reader-pad instead of swiped to make a transaction? Imagine if your phone could do that, but better. According to several prominent manufacturers’ websites, a small number of cell phones in the U.S. and an increasingly large number abroad have been equipped with a technology called near-field communication, which allows close-range data transfer between devices. Similar to Bluetooth, though faster and easier to use, NFC builds on what those credit cards can do by allowing a two-way transfer of information. This means instead of your phone simply coughing up information another device requests, your phone can ask you to perform other tasks, such as input a password before a transaction can be completed.
So now, imagine yourself at the grocery store. You check out, wave your phone at the register and leave. As you wait for the bus outside, you notice a poster on the side of the bus stop advertising a new CD you want. You hold your phone up to the embedded chip and your phone asks you if you want to purchase the CD. You hit yes, and it begins your download via iTunes or whatever online music store you prefer. On the bus, you lift your phone near the fare-box and after paying your fare, your screen alerts you your funds are low and asks you if you would like to replenish your account.
All of these technologies have already been developed and are simply waiting for adoption by phone manufacturers and commercial sellers. However, a test run among riders of San Francisco’s rapid transit system showed promising results, with participants making frequent use of NFC technology to board trains, make purchases and interact with advertisements. The real push toward NFC, however, will come from another source entirely — Apple.
Digital tickets (2012)
The potential for a phone to act as a ticket using NFC is not limited to the bus. A patent filed recently by Apple obtained by www.patentlyapple.com would give phones (and iPods) the capability to be turned into a ticket for just about anything. Using phones as tickets isn’t a new concept — some airlines allow passengers to check-in and pass through airport check points with digital tickets shown on their phones — but Apple’s method would be the first to implement NFC as opposed to a simple barcode in a high profile application, hopefully making it an industry standard. Apple’s patent also includes interesting concepts for packaging other services with tickets sold, including directions to a venue, coupons and exclusive related media content.
Location-based connectors (Now)
Chances are you’ve heard of Foursquare, Gowalla or Loopt, all of which are location-based applications aimed at connecting users with friends and strangers around them. Twitter also recently unveiled location-aware tweets. All of these still have relatively low user numbers, including Twitter, as the feature is opt-in. However, a major player is expected to enter the location-based arena today: Facebook. At the social media giant’s annual f8 conference, officials will announce Facebook’s take on communicating location to friends. Although Facebook will most likely implement the feature in a general listing of a city and state in statuses, the ability for developers to use location however they see fit means applications such as Foursquare will instantly have access and be useful to a 4 million person-strong audience. With Facebook counting more than one-fourth of its users as those interacting via their mobile phones, the announcement will mean location-based connections are now a widespread reality.
Video conferencing platforms (2012)
Most notably in the case of the iPhone, video conferencing has been rumored to be on the near horizon for general use in mobile devices for years. Another technology that is rare in the U.S. and more common abroad, manufacturers have been slow to implement videophones because of carriers’ fear of the amount of data eaten up by live-streaming video. However, there are a number of indicators the time for video conferencing in the U.S. is nearing. Apps such as Skype, which usually runs in a simplified form on phones that only allows calls, and live-streaming platforms such as Ustream and Qik are available on smartphones. Apple has been filing patents for several years now that depict a forward-facing camera, and a misplaced phone recently obtained by tech site Gizmodo — strongly suspected to be the next-generation iPhone — includes the extra camera. A shift to a 4G wireless network, which will offer much better data transfer speeds, is already underway by companies such as Sprint. When the first phones are able to access the network late this year or in early 2011, the inclusion of video conferencing capabilities will be a no-brainer.
Signe Brewster is a sophomore majoring in life sciences communication. If you have a wish list for what your phone can do or a topic you want to see addressed in Technologic, e-mail her at [email protected].
