At some point in the near future, our mobile phones will evolve as follows:
- Mobile phones will have sufficiently high speed bandwidth to support any application we'd want to imagine, including augmented reality applications that I'll get to later.
- They will all be capable of recording unlimited audio, photos, and video, all tagged by your exact position on this planet, and storing that in the cloud.
- They will support 3-factor authentication, including something like iris scan or thumb print to securely authenticate the identify of the holder of the device.
- The will carry their own cash value, independent of any bank or country, but redeemable at any bank.
- Of course you'll be able to use them to get into trains, BART, movie theaters, and what's next?
- They will support interactive natural language voice conversations in your own native language with an artificially intelligent agent, who does your bidding on the net. "Make me an 8pm reservation at the best sushi restaurant you can find within 30 minutes driving distance. And don't forget to invite my wife!", and your restaurant reservation confirmation flows through your system message stream and your wife receives the invitation. But on your wife's mobile device, it routes the directions from her work place to the restaurant, so when she gets in her car she's all set to go. (Must pay homage to Steve Jobs and the Knowledge Navigator concept here.)
- They will integrate with our smart TVs, which will really be nothing more than mobile phones with very large screens, and different user interfaces to take advantage of the greater distance and different interaction mechanisms. We'll probably carry our content rights in the cloud, authenticating with our mobile devices, able to project our content in a multitude of places like on walls, big screen TVs, entertainment systems, and of course, our 3D glasses.
- Gestures not touching the display device directly will begin to play a larger part in our device interactions, coming first from the video gaming sector, but then moving on to smart televisions and eventually our mobile devices. You'll just point and grab at your phone without actually touching it to tell it to pick up a call. Or if it's ringing in your pocket, just tell it to "shush!"
- The display screens will eventually be able to project on any wall surface, controlled by your mobile device. You'll see the Doppler weather projected on your wall, you'll see the lunar eclipse projected on your ceiling, and so on.
- They will plug into all cars and be your entire GPS and entertainment system, though there will be quite a fierce battle for that throughout the decade and it will take a while for a good solution to emerge.
- Wireless battery charging will become a phenomenon. For example, Starbucks might give you free wireless device battery charging along with free WIFI.
- 3D Interfaces will be common, and eventually without the need for special glasses. Real advances in 3D user interfaces won't be made until 2017 or 2018 though.
- Augmented reality will continue to percolate on as an interesting discipline without gaining huge market value until perhaps closer to 2020, when inexpensive portable glasses and audio devices will be available that will project augmented 3D audio and spacial reality, mediated by our mobile devices. Then the value of this field will explode, and those with good position will be poised to take great advantage of the revolution. There will be applications to improve driving skills, find the best lane at the super market, GPS navigation will never be the same, help you play golf, and perhaps even teach you how to mambo.
- A more cybernetic type of reality could emerge, because the reality our senses are constantly taking in, is literally being modified by computer software to enhance that reality with additional information our senses could never perceive, such as satellite imagery, ideal drive lines on the golf course, estimated wait times at each isle on the super market - the possibilities are endless. Can you think of a few?

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