The Next Five Years of Phones, speculation

[firewolfsm]

By the end of this year they'll have 4-5 inch 3D screens, and quad core processors rivaling the older core2 dual cores in our laptops. They'll probably integrate 64GB of memory and at least 2GB of ram sometime in 2012. Speeds are doubling every 14 months or so, as opposed to the 24 months Moore's law used to dictate. That's because besides doubling transistor count, we're also integrating components and being a bit more clever in design. When we can't do this anymore, we'll be using wireless tech for cloud computing to speed things even faster. Smartphone development marks the fastest technological evolution we've ever seen, indeed, the fastest evolution of anything on Earth, ever.

With this trend, I think in 4-6 years, they'll be as fast as our latest desktop quad cores. They should have two high quality lenses, further apart then they are now, with the software to determine location, and what the phone is looking at. We should have found some way to improve viewing angles on these 3D screens by then. A simple form of IBM's Watson speech recognition should be implemented, so that we can easily command it to do a number of things with natural, comfortable speech commands. They'll be thinner of course, basically metal slates with a large screen. Memory and RAM will be increased by a factor of 4-8 over the 2012 figures I mentioned and we'll be well into the 5th generation of wireless internet speeds, maybe we'll break 8Gb speeds. Meaning we'll be able to download large programs and movies in a couple seconds.

Maybe the rest of you have some insight, predictions for actual innovations. Good ways to harness all that processor power.

 

[Anubis]

unless something mindblowing happens in terms of batteries phones/tabs will NEVER be as powerful as a desktop

 

[Judgement]

....and we'll still be on 2gb capped data plans

Net neutrality will fail due to big corps continueing to buy out politicians, so we'll also be stuck using whatever services our providers 'let' us pay them for as the 'net gets segregated

 

[Pliablemoose]

Yep, battery tech and the carriers are making it difficult to innovate

 

[firewolfsm]

Even with better batteries, we would still be limited in energy consumption by heat. We innovate in performance per watt, at the scales I mentioned above.

And data caps will still increase exponentially with time, just like any other technology we have.

 

[zerocool84]

Well I hope we move away from caps so we can get this ball moving. Carriers are killing all the innovation. In many other countries, more people have smartphones than computers and I hope that happens here.

 

[Patranus]

unless something mindblowing happens in terms of batteries phones/tabs will NEVER be as powerful as a desktop

Just look at what playon is doing with low cost/"underpowered" hardware.

We are just going to go back to the 70s with massive server farms and thin clients.

I doubt we see that much innovation in phone hardware in the next 5 years. Most of the innovation is going to be in software.

 

[Bateluer]

Phone processing power will increase, same with RAM and screen density. Battery tech will improve too, albeit at a slower pace. Camera quality will improve as well. Revolutionary? Probably not, but all these will continue to evolve. Its network bandwidth that's going to be the limiting factor.

 

[MotionMan]

If 'The Matrix" taught us anything, it is that people will make good batteries. In 5 years, phones will be implanted with heads-up displays and "Minority Report" interfaces.

MotionMan

 

[mammador]

I think the smartphone and tablet markets will merge. This IMO is the future of personal computing. Desktop sales will stagnate, and laptops will go out of style. Netbooks will be a fad IMO, since smartphone/tablets both fill the same market segment/target market.

 

[Patranus]

I think the smartphone and tablet markets will merge. This IMO is the future of personal computing. Desktop sales will stagnate, and laptops will go out of style. Netbooks will be a fad IMO, since smartphone/tablets both fill the same market segment/target market.

The iPad has already turned the netbook into a fad.

 

[MikeMike]

If wireless displays ever take off/get working stablely...

Tablets become phones, while phones get to become small dumb touchscreens...

 

[MrX8503]

By the end of this year they'll have 4-5 inch 3D screens, and quad core processors rivaling the older core2 dual cores in our laptops....

Yeah...uh...no. I stopped reading your post after that. Multi-core desktop CPU's tosses mobile processors around like a rag doll.

People get way too caught up in multi-core that, ghz this, GBs, MBs that, etc. Its the architecture that sets them apart. You cannot directly compare processors by just reading a spec sheet.

 

[the DRIZZLE]

By the end of this year they'll have 4-5 inch 3D screens, and quad core processors rivaling the older core2 dual cores in our laptops. They'll probably integrate 64GB of memory and at least 2GB of ram sometime in 2012. Speeds are doubling every 14 months or so, as opposed to the 24 months Moore's law used to dictate. That's because besides doubling transistor count, we're also integrating components and being a bit more clever in design. When we can't do this anymore, we'll be using wireless tech for cloud computing to speed things even faster. Smartphone development marks the fastest technological evolution we've ever seen, indeed, the fastest evolution of anything on Earth, ever.

With this trend, I think in 4-6 years, they'll be as fast as our latest desktop quad cores. They should have two high quality lenses, further apart then they are now, with the software to determine location, and what the phone is looking at. We should have found some way to improve viewing angles on these 3D screens by then. A simple form of IBM's Watson speech recognition should be implemented, so that we can easily command it to do a number of things with natural, comfortable speech commands. They'll be thinner of course, basically metal slates with a large screen. Memory and RAM will be increased by a factor of 4-8 over the 2012 figures I mentioned and we'll be well into the 5th generation of wireless internet speeds, maybe we'll break 8Gb speeds. Meaning we'll be able to download large programs and movies in a couple seconds.

Maybe the rest of you have some insight, predictions for actual innovations. Good ways to harness all that processor power.

I'm not gonna go line by line to critique your specs but I think you are overestimating both the rate of technological progress and the need for high performance in smartphones. I seriously doubt a phone will be as fast as a current quad core computer in 5 years. Phones today aren't anywhere near as powerful as computers from 5 years ago. You are also underestimating the limitations imposed by batteries.

BTW IBM Watson doesn't use speech recognition, it was fed the questions in text form.

 

[Spoooon]

Will we be wearing baggier/looser clothing for our phones with 5 inch screens?

 

[Patranus]

I really don't understand why people think there is such a need to push the specs on a phone.

It reminds my of the GHZ wars during the P4 era. 100% pointless.

Software is going online. If I can play a game like Batman: Arkham Asylum on current generation hardware by simply using the "cloud" then what is the need to sacrifice battery life?

LTE is about the only thing major that is going to roll out hardware wise. Sure there will be bells and whistles like 3D or higher resolution cameras but those things aren;t really new.

 

[zerocool84]

I really don't understand why people think there is such a need to push the specs on a phone.

It reminds my of the GHZ wars during the P4 era. 100% pointless.

Software is going online. If I can play a game like Batman: Arkham Asylum on current generation hardware by simply using the "cloud" then what is the need to sacrifice battery life?

LTE is about the only thing major that is going to roll out hardware wise. Sure there will be bells and whistles like 3D or higher resolution cameras but those things aren;t really new.

Things are going cloud but if we still have 2GB caps, there's no way we can do cloud mobile computing.

 

[Raduque]

God I hope that 3d bullshit will be massively optional. I don't want any of it.

 

[wuliheron]

Other then internet capability I see phones becoming more specialized. Instead of competing with tablets and more powerful PCs phones will double as gaming devices, video cameras, etc. To some extent they already do, but I'm talking about serious HD video and gaming. Already gameboy is coming out with its own phone and with all the legacy games out there I expect people will someday be playing Crysis on their phone. In some sense you could say the issue is that phones and internet connectivity are becoming integrated in such devices rather then vice versa. The real question then is what devices will phones be integrated into next.

 

[firewolfsm]

Yeah...uh...no. I stopped reading your post after that. Multi-core desktop CPU's tosses mobile processors around like a rag doll.

People get way too caught up in multi-core that, ghz this, GBs, MBs that, etc. Its the architecture that sets them apart. You cannot directly compare processors by just reading a spec sheet.

I seriously doubt a phone will be as fast as a current quad core computer in 5 years. Phones today aren't anywhere near as powerful as computers from 5 years ago. You are also underestimating the limitations imposed by batteries.

BTW IBM Watson doesn't use speech recognition, it was fed the questions in text form.

You all sound like Bill Gates, saying we'll never need more than a few hundred KB of ram. I have data to show this.

I didn't read a spec sheet, I checked benchmarks, they were nvidia benchmarks, true, but they do claim better than Core 2 performance for the quad core tegra. Think about it, we were using Windows XP five years ago, barely watching 1080p video without stuttering, that's where our phones are now (they're recording it in fact.) Transistor count indicates this might be true, the dual core Tegra has 260M transistors, excluding the graphics portion, there may be around 150M devoted to the processor and memory controller. This equals the count for Athlon X2. The quad core tegra will move this number past Core 2 Duo numbers. I talk of Tegra because the data is there, qualcomm and samsung will of course be good competitors.

This shows a 5 year trend, Core 2 was 2006/2007. 5 Years is now about 4 generations of mobile processor development, or about a 1/16 reduction in power consumption. 45W goes to under 3W. By 2014, nvidia projects 20X the quad core tegra performance, by 2016, 40 or 80X. I can see that matching my prediction. Don't underestimate exponential growth. In 5 years, we'll be carrying the equivalent of a Core i5 quad core in our pockets. This is a fact, it's already been done. And this speed will be put to use, my example of speech and language recognition is a good one, but there are others for sure. I made this thread mostly hoping to get other examples of good use for this kind of processing.


And we can combine speech recognition, and Watson's language recognition in one program.

I think 3D is bullshit too, but it is the necessary precursor to midair projections, true 3D, with information and resolution in the depth scale as well. I think it actually might be accomplished by putting three of these bullshit 3D screens at right angles, if the viewing angle was improved.

 

[rockyct]

God I hope that 3d bullshit will be massively optional. I don't want any of it.

Yeah, it really doesn't belong in a phone right now. Maybe in a couple years 3D games on phones become very popular and will be common on all the App stores. I've learned from the transition to HD. Don't buy something in anticipation of it becoming big, buy it when it is big.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

5 years ago I got an LED flash phone with 2MP capabilities. I honestly thought Xenon would come in. In late 2007 I got my Nokia N82 which had Xenon. However, we didn't see xenon again til the N8, and today's Android phones seem to suck balls at imaging still.

I honestly didn't see this CPU arms race either, but it seems to be a major issue in the Android world. But then again did I see this whole spawn of touchscreen OSes back then either? Nah. I honestly thought the battle would be fought over features like wifi, FM radio, camera, video, UI, etc.

 

[Munky]

There's no way in hell even the latest phone cpu will rival a Core2 cpu from years ago. The latest Coretex A9 just got out of order execution, which is a feature desktop PC have had since the Pentium Pro. MHz is only a relevant metric within similar architectures, and clock for clock desktop cpu's are vastly more powerful than anything you'll find on a phone.

 

[MrX8503]

You all sound like Bill Gates, saying we'll never need more than a few hundred KB of ram. I have data to show this.

You specifically stated by the end of this year quad core mobile would rival core2duo. This is nothing but a pipe dream.

Intel Atom is faster than the old Pentium 4, but it took a long time. Also an Atom is several times more power hungry than an ARM processor. What makes you think a quad ARM processor would rival a C2D?

I don't think you know how powerful a C2D really is. Remember that desktop CPUs are running full fledged OSs that are several GBs in size without a restriction of battery life. A mobile phone is many many times smaller.

 

[firewolfsm]

To back its performance claims up, Nvidia used the Coremark benchmark to compare the Kal-El SoC to the last-generation Tegra 2 design - and threw in one of Intel's Core 2 Duo processors for kicks. While the Tegra 2 scored a mere 5,840, beaten handily by the high-power x86 Core 2 Duo T7200 at 10,136, the Kal-El chip beat both with an astonishing score of 11,352.

Read more: http://www.thinq.co.uk/2011/2/16/nvidia-outs-tegra-3-kal-el-quad-core-arm-soc/#ixzz0m5aOVgk1

It also beats sub 2GHz Core 2s in terms of MIPS and FLOPS.

FIVE YEARS, that's exactly how long it takes to fully integrate a desktop processor into a cell phone form factor.

Like I said, the transistors are there. And think logically, Atom faster than P4, new out of order ARM as fast as Atom (at least, has more transistors, more cache, same pipelining), C2D only 40% faster than P4, then 4 OoO ARMs should beat C2D.