The mobile telephones of the
future will be able to see, shrink while becoming larger, and slip into their
users’ skins. That terse statement summarizes the recently released results of
a thorough look at the next ten to fifteen years of mobile telephony by the University
of Darmstadt’s ‘Future Internet’ research cluster. The displays of future
mobile telephones will merge virtual and physical reality. They will enrich
images that their cameras capture with other information. The mobile telephones
of the future will need large displays, but be capable of being shrunk to the
size of a pencil. Although displays that can be rolled up and folded will take
care of that, users will have their hands full simultaneously manipulating the
display and the telephone’s controls.
Future mobile-telephone networks
will have to be capable of handling much higher transmission rates than their
current counterparts. Mobile telephones and their networks will have to be more
flexible in dealing with variations in signal levels. Mobile telephones will
have to return responses from the ‘cloud’ on a millisecond time scale, where a
portion of the ‘cloud’ will have to shift to mobile-telephone users’ immediate
vicinities. The Darmstadt roadmap also envisions how future mobile telephones
will become the heart of new security concepts. Since mobile telephones are
handling growing numbers of critical smart-phone services, such as opening
doors or handling payment of tolls, legal and financial risks will be involved.
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