Smartphones have become such a necessity to people over the last few years that the smartphone has almost become like a sixth sense. A few weeks ago I attended Interactive Day San Diego and watched a speaker from Qualcomm present his idea of this digital sixth sense. The idea is that our phone learns, filters, senses, knows, interacts, and discovers. It has become an amplifier to the way we view and experience the world around us. He also shared with us some of the new technologies Qualcomm is rolling out in the very near future to reinforce this sixth sense.

One of the simplest and most interesting things we will see is the ability for your smartphone to use the GPS location tracking while your device is in sleep mode. Of course the first thing that comes to mind is security. No  one wants people to know where they are all time, but the security technologies implemented in a new feature like this are guaranteed to be just as advanced as the GPS itself. So when we get past the fear of being tracked, we can start to see the benefits of having a feature like this at our disposal. One example he used in his presentation is a coffee shop. Imagine your morning coffee shop has an app that lets you sign up and receive your location. You order the same thing every morning, so when you are five minutes from the shop, they can get a notification to start making your favorite morning beverage and heat your scone. When you walk in you’re handed the good and continue to work, saving 10 to 15 minutes. There could also be an ongoing account linked to your credit card so that when you pick up your coffee, they just charge it and you are off. This is only one example but the possibilities are quite vast when you start thinking creatively.

Another technology we will see a lot more of is augmented reality. This is by no means new, having been around for some years now, but over time has grown and evolved and continues to become better and more efficient. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Augmented Reality lets you see the world around you through the camera of your smartphone while changing or “augmenting” things via graphics, animations, video, etc. Imagine walking by the movie theater while you’re at the mall. You see a movie poster but have no idea what its about. So you pull out your iPhone, open an app and point your camera at the poster. Suddenly the character on the poster begins talking to you, asking if you’d like to visit the mobile site or view the trailer, even buy tickets right then and there. It sounds like something out of a science fiction movie but it is very possible even with the AR technologies we have today.

Probably the most ambitious feature in future smartphones is tearing down the barrier of needing an app. As of right now, to use any of these features you need to go to the App Store or Google Play, download and install an app, and open it every time you want to use it. The next step is to have everything run off of the cloud or through a mobile internet connection. This isn’t as close to being in our pockets as the other features we talked about, but it is definitely the next step in the evolution of smartphones.

I’m sure that we will see many more cool ways to interact with the mobile world very soon. If there are any cool and innovative new technologies that you’ve heard about please share them in the comment section below.

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