Future features we want

August 30, 2010 - 12:00 pm

Sure, texting’s ok, picture messages are fun  and cheap gaming apps keep us amused for a while, but we want more from our mobiles!  Here are some futuristic features we really need from our handsets.

The newest smartphones are boasting video calls, with the iPhone 4 touting its free Wi-Fi enabled FaceTime service.  Not bad, but we’d like to see the person we’re talking to in 3D, like they’re really there.  Imagine if your phone could generate a 3D hologram of the person, like R2D2 in Star Wars!

While we’re thinking about images, cameras on phones are almost always disappointingly poor, producing grainy photos of your most spontaneous snaps.  Instead of seeing fuzzy images of city sites or party moments, we’d like an SLR quality lens in our next camera please, with an amazing paparazzi-style zoom and a suite of editing software so we can touch up our pics before posting them to Facebook. 

SLR please!

We’ve had enough of texting with fiddly buttons and spelling mistakes, why can’t we just talk into our phone and it automatically writes down our messages already?

We all dread sitting next to that guy on the train who yells into his phone.  Let’s banish shouting with a handset that automatically ups the volume so you can hear the speaker, even if there’s an almighty racket in the background.  We’d like a sensitive mouthpiece too. 

And that brings us on to reception.  We can’t wait for 4G which promises to transform mobile internet speeds, boost signal in places and make sending multimedia data more efficient.  Check out our guide here.

Every time you change your phone, taking contacts with you seems to be a hassle.  Sometimes phones even inexplicably delete the numbers of people you really need to stay in touch with.  We’d like a contacts book that knows who your friends are and prioritises the numbers of your nearest and dearest and those you frequently message on Facebook or Tweet to. 

Even better, if you meet someone for the first time and you really get on, how great would it be if you could automatically swap numbers at the touch of a single button instead of fumbling about asking for their digits?  To help daters everywhere, we’d also like to see an automatic lock on exes’ numbers after a certain time in the evening when your phone suspects you’ve been out partying, to save on those cringe-worthy messaging moments.

With all those films you can watch on the go now-a-days we’d like a lush, large screen to watch them on.  Maybe a roll-up screen could work or pair of glasses that put you in the heart of the action, but don’t make you look silly!  And we’d like live TV on our phones for those long commutes or traffic jams.

On a practical level, auto-charging would be heavenly so we never run out of battery when we really need to make a call again.  An indestructible screen and drink spillage-proof case would be handy too.

And for the icing on the cake, we’d like to see the end of contracts and make mobile free for everyone….as if!

Any brainwaves of your own?  Let us know!