Once upon a time, a telephone was a device, connected via a thin cable to a wall, meant for long-distance vocal communication. Taking the phone anywhere outside the reach of the cable also meant taking the wall. Photographing people with a phone seemed as fundamentally absurd as listening to music on a computer.

The lowly phone has come a long way since then, and most of us wish it would keep going. But where? To find out what the future holds for mobile phones, I sat down with Dr. Maxwell Smart of the Maekbeleeve Institute of Phone-E Research. After two hours, he agreed to speak to me.

Dr. Smart, people are doing things with their phones today that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. What will they being doing next?

They’ll be taking photographs, checking email, listening to music, watching videos, instant messaging, and browsing the web. They’ll also use their phones for non-local vocal interfacing, otherwise called “Talking to people who aren’t in the same room.”

But people do all of those things with phones today.

True, but in the future they’ll do them better. Consider photographs. Image quality-wise, tomorrow’s phone-taken photos will compare to today’s like the Taj Mahal compares to a duck. Right here at the Institute, we’ve been testing the viability of technology for phones with Imax-quality resolution.

Really? When will we actually see product?

As soon as someone finds enough free space in the phone to store all that film.

What about watching video on phones? Will that change?

There’s an interesting dichotomy right now in consumer video technology. People are buying iPods and phones that offer very small, low-resolution video. On the other hand, people--and we have reason to suspect that many are the same people--are buying larger televisions and investing in HDTV delivery systems. We believe, however, that these two forms will soon merge, allowing consumers to enjoy 1080p HDTV on 60-inch screens build into their mobile phones.

Excuse me for pointing out the obvious, but isn’t there a basic conflict there?

Of course. I suspect that some phone companies will support Blu-Ray and others HD-DVD.

Actually, I was wondering how a pocket device can have a 60-inch screen.

Miniaturization. As technology advances, things get smaller, so that within a few years, an inch will measure a fraction of a millimeter. It’s like Moore’s Law, only without the scientific data.

You mentioned iPods a little while ago. As phones’ storage capacity improves, will they challenge Apple’s dominance of the portable digital music market.

Absolutely. People are disgusted with Apple’s monopolistic practices. They resent the fact that music purchased on iTunes won’t work on any other MP3 player, while music purchased at any other online store won’t work on an iPod. Mobile phone companies see this disgust as a business opportunity. They believe that the disgusted consumers will revolt by purchasing music they can only play on their phones.

What about phones as business tools? Road warriors are already keeping appointments, looking up contacts, and reading and writing email on their phones. What’s coming down the pike?

Spreadsheets. A high-powered executive needs instant access to the entire company budget, along with the ability to play “what if” with the numbers. For instance, “What if we cut prices but increase production next year?” Or “What if I embezzle 839,000 Euros this quarter?” Or even “What if I could really make sense of a 6,000-column worksheet on a two-inch screen?”

Expect CAD to be very big on the next generation of phones. Also database management, imaging, and nuclear weapon design.

Won’t there be security issues? If a phone like that is stolen, the consequences would be far worse than everyone reading Paris Hilton’s address book.

You have to look at the big picture. Phone manufacturers envy the computer industry, and want to obsolete laptops entirely. This requires putting everything a laptop does into a smaller package. Remember that scandal a while back where someone stole a U.S. government laptop filled with top secret information? That’s every phone designer’s dream.

Of course, tomorrow’s phones will come with vastly superior security tools--for those people who bother to use them. One plan I looked at requires each file stored on the phone’s hard drive to have its own unique, extremely strong, 28-character password.

And if you forget one of your passwords?

No problem. Call the operator and someone will give it to you.

Of course, a phone’s primary function is still talking, so…

You mean non-local vocal interfacing?

Uh, yeah. How will that change?

As soon as landline phones disappear altogether, mobile phone companies will stop offering that feature.

Are you saying that phones will cease to be phones?

Of course not, but the definition will change as phones outgrow their usefulness as communications devices. Today, you can make phone calls on a picture phone. You can even, conceivably, make phone calls on a smart phone. But are you really willing to make calls on a smart picture video MP3 HDTV spreadsheet CAD government secret weapon designer phone? Especially one with three blades and a corkscrew? Just putting all that machinery up to your face could be dangerous. Besides, a full battery charge will only last five minutes.

Which brings up the issue of batteries. What improvements can we expect to see in…

Sorry. I gotta go. Phone’s ringing.

© Copyright 2006 by Lincoln Spector