The most innovative and interesting features of modern flagship smartphones

Smartphones of the future: top cutting-edge features. Source:?unsplash.com

In 2019, such a thing as a smartphone is commonplace. In developed countries with advanced economies, approximately, more than 75% of the population has smartphones. Moreover, statistically, as of the end of 2018, no less than 5B people have mobile phones, while over half of these devices are smartphones.

It is no surprise that the modern mobile-device market is highly competitive since every big smartphone manufacturer is eager to sell more devices than its nearest competitors. Chasing big sales, producers invent more and more advanced features to pique the interest of their customers and prospective users.

Mostly, only flagship models of mobile devices are endowed with the top features. Thus, PaySpace Magazine has decided to find out which features are most advanced to date, and whether these features will become the norm for mid-priced smartphones in the near future.

In-screen fingerprint sensor

An in-display fingerprint scanner would sound like something fantastic in 2017, and was first officially introduced at CES 2018. This technology was one of the most anticipated and sought after, so the appearance of a gadget with such a feature did not seriously surprise anyone. However, everybody was surprised by the fact that the innovative feature was introduced not by some giant like Samsung or Apple, but by the relatively small Chinese company Vivo.

Today, a lot of manufacturers (Huawei, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Samsung, and others) endow their devices with this feature. Thus, an in-display fingerprint scanner is a good example of the technology that has become the norm for devices in different price ranges in just one year.

Smartphone-laptop

An unusual system called Project Linda was introduced by Razer. In fact, Project Linda is a concept for a docking station that turns an Android smartphone into a fully-fledged laptop. The heart of the system is the powerful Razer Phone gaming smartphone.

The smartphone is docked in the ultraportable laptop, and serves as an intelligent touchpad. On the face of it, the station looks like an ordinary laptop with a 13.3” touch display.

After installation, the smartphone becomes the core of the system. The laptop uses the computing power of the Razer Phone and does not work separately from it. The only component of the docking station that extends the functionality of the smartphone (if you do not take into account the obvious peripherals, such as a monitor and keyboard) is an additional 200GB hard drive.

Frankly, we are not sure that Project Linda will be very successful or revolutionize the market. Such a hybrid system is too unusual for the average user. Nevertheless, the experiment has turned out to be quite interesting.

Lenovo Vital Moto Mod

Basically, Lenovo Vital Moto Mod is a special dockable medical accessory compatible with Motorola Z series smartphones. This device is designed to measure such things as body temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, plus oxygen.

It is hard to predict whether this accessory will be popular (maybe the manufacturer should solve the issue of compatibility, since Motorola is not the most popular brand nowadays), but one thing that we do know is, this device goes much further than conventional smartwatches and fitness trackers.

5G

2019 is predicted to be the year of 5G. The promised speed is about 1-2 Gbit/s, which is quite a high rate. Analysts predict that by 2024, 20% of mobile traffic will go through devices that support 5G.

While there is no full-scale 5G network infrastructure yet (they have only just begun the rollout), smartphone manufacturers are going to use 5G as the major “thing” of 2019. Even if users do not have a 5G signal, the sticker on the box of the smartphone will mean that the device is suitable for future technology, so 5G-compatible products will be produced.

A number of big names have already promised that they will introduce 5G within 2019. Source: samsung.com

A number of big names have already promised that they will introduce 5G within 2019: companies such as OnePlus, Samsung, Sony, Huawei, LG, Motorola, and others have announced their desire to introduce 5G phones in 2019. Apple and Google are keeping silent, but it might be just the calm before the storm. What exactly will 5G give when the phones and infrastructure are ready for it? Of course, faster download speeds (maybe hundreds of times in some scenarios) and a large network capacity.

Foldable smartphone

The technology is not new since the first implementation of this concept dates back to 2006 (Polymer Vision by Philips introduced a foldable Readius smartphone). However, the real dawn of the concept peaked in 2018-2019, and Samsung Galaxy Fold, along with Huawei Mate X, is the real proof of this very fact.

Samsung’s foldable phone. Source: samsung.com

However, it will take some time to understand whether this concept will be useful, hence popular.

More cameras, please

Meet the flagship Nokia 9 PureView powered by Android 9.0 Pie. This is the world’s first smartphone with five sensors in one camera. Essentially, it is a new view of mobile photography.

The Nokia 9 PureView targets the strengths of HMD Global’s competitors — photography — with a five-camera configuration developed in partnership with Zeiss and Light. The Nokia 9’s penta-cam is able to capture 12 times the depth data of a standard dual-camera phone.

It is an amazing feature, but the question is, will ordinary users (not sophisticated photo-geeks) need such a strong photo-oriented feature?

P.S. We are also afraid that some manufacturers will not stop there, and endow their devices with six, seven, or eight cameras. Now the question is, when is it the best time to stop? (The answer is – when there is no more free space on the rear side of the housing).

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