These are the smartphone innovations I’m excited about

Every major smartphone company is promoting artificial intelligence as the next frontier of smartphone innovation. While AI is indeed valuable, I believe there are much more disruptive technologies in the works that could change the way we use our phones in ways we never imagined before.

1 Graphene and semiconductor batteries

Almost all modern consumer electronics use lithium-ion batteries. Their concept dates back to the 1970s and they were first commercially available in the early 1990s. Since then, we have been almost entirely dependent on this precious metal for technological progress. And now we begin to hit the limit of his merits.

As we continue to expect more from our devices and experiment with new form factors, they will require faster processors and larger displays, both of which require more power. But there’s only so much space inside the phone, and most of it is already taken up by the battery.

This means that while lithium-ion once helped push progress forward, it is now actively holding it back. Clearly, we need to find a way to store more energy on less land.

Fortunately, we have some promising candidates, namely graphene and solid-state batteries. Both offer higher energy density, longer life and faster charging. If investment continues, we could be looking at a future where you can last a weekend or more on a single charge and recharge your phone in 10 minutes or less.

2 Air charging

I’m not a big fan of wireless charging, mainly because it’s not technically wireless. After all, the charging dock you place your phone on is plugged into the wall with a wire.

Ideally, you should be able to charge your phone no matter where you are in the room without having to hold it – and that’s exactly what wireless charging promises. Xiaomi and Motorola have been working on this technology for some time.

The reason it’s not ready is because transferring power through the air is even more difficult and slower than transferring via a charging dock. This means that if we switch to graphene batteries, their high conductivity can help speed up charging and alleviate this shortcoming.

3 Stronger ultra-thin bendable glass

The fragility of the screen on foldable phones is the biggest thing holding back their adoption. Even if we remove all the other common problems with foldable phones, making a sheet of glass that is both bendable and rigid is very difficult.

Why? Because flexibility and toughness are opposite qualities. To make a sheet of glass more flexible, you have to make it thinner, which inevitably weakens it, and vice versa.

The good news is that companies are actually working to fix this problem. We know that Corning, the company that makes Gorilla Glass, is investing in making ultra-thin, more durable glass for the next generation of foldable phones.

We are actively developing next-generation glass-based solutions that will continue to push the boundaries of durability and offer consumers the damage protection they expect from their devices.

4 Long-range continuous optical zoom

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We expect smartphones to have multiple camera lenses: one for wide-angle, one for ultra-wide and one for telephoto. But that’s not ideal because these lenses have a fixed focal length, resulting in inconsistent image and video quality. This is why the quality of your images, while good at certain magnifications, deteriorates once you zoom in anywhere between these fixed focal points.

For example, if your phone has a 3x telephoto lens, zooming in to 2.9x magnification will likely result in a worse looking photo. However, when you zoom in to 3x, your phone switches to a telephoto lens and you’ll notice an increase in image quality.

Companies are trying to reduce the effects of this damage by adding high-definition cameras and digital cropping to footage. But these are all temporary solutions until we figure out how to achieve long-range continuous optical zoom on smartphones. Ideally, your phone should have just one excellent camera that can do it all – and we’re getting there.

At CES 2023, LG Innotek announced the world’s first 4x-9x continuous optical zoom camera module in a compound optics design. This surpasses the range of the Sony Xperia 1 VI, which allows continuous zoom from 3.5x to 7.1x.

Another way to do this is to use an extendable camera lens, identical to DSLRs and mirrorless cameras. Xiaomi introduced a concept phone with the same in 2020 and we have already seen this feature implemented in an actual commercial unit as well as on the Tecno Phantom X2 Pro.

Of the two, I think the compound optics design is much more likely to be the future of smartphone cameras, simply because the obsolescence of pop-up selfies has taught us that using motorized moving parts in a phone isn’t the best idea.

5 MicroLED panels

If Samsung’s latest investments are any indication, microLED is likely to be the next smartphone display standard. OLED is the current leader among smartphone displays thanks to its color accuracy and deep blacks, but it suffers from image burn-in and is not as bright as LCD.

MicroLED solves both of these problems while maintaining the benefits of OLED, consuming less power and reducing screen glare. Samsung’s The Wall TV already uses microLED, so we probably won’t have to wait too long to see it come to the Galaxy flagship.

6 Frameless displays

People have been rendering bezel-less phones for years. We have yet to see a commercial unit as the front of the device houses not only the display, but also the proximity sensor, ambient light sensor, earpiece and most importantly, the selfie camera. And there is a limit to how far you can squeeze them.

Even if you move all the other components elsewhere, the front camera has to stay on top for obvious reasons. The only way to hide it is to bury it under the display. Some gaming phones come with an under-display camera, but their image quality is poor because the screen reduces the light entering the sensor.

This means that under-display cameras are getting better, and when they get good enough to be put on a mainstream flagship, they’ll give us the leap in design we’ve all been waiting for.

While some of the above innovations may take a few years to reach smartphones, others are likely to arrive within the next three to five years. That may still seem like a long time, but given their potential, I’d say it’s worth the wait.