The Battle For The Bulge: The Future Phone

We’ve been writing for a while now about the development of the mobile phone – on one hand, there seems to be a drive for convergence so that the phone becomes all things that you need to carry in your pocket (hence ‘the bulge’) and then on the other, there seems to be a need for simplicity – some people own two phones: one for email and work like a Blackberry, and one for social and weekends like a RAZR. This could be also driven by the ‘End Of Inbetween’ trend we’ve been writing about where we seem to be losing our personal time and space though technology.

You can read our Battle For The Bulge posts here, but we’re driven to write because The Economist has an article on the phone of the future where they look at the plans and forecasts made by different handset manufacturers. An extract:

Combining all of these components in a single device, as today’s phones do, means that keyboards and screens must be small; make them too big and the phone becomes too bulky and ceases to be a device that can be carried everywhere. Separate earpieces, linked to the handset by a Bluetooth radio link, are already growing in popularity. Some users might choose to hook up separate screens and keyboards when needed, such as when answering e-mail or browsing the web.

The phone of the future | Economist.com

[ via Pasta and Vinegar and Zero Influence ]