Upcoming Cell Phones

This summer, consumers will be clamoring for the latest cell phones to hit the market: the iPhone 3G S and Palm Pre. Jam-packed with features, both devices are more like computers than the mobile phone Zack Morris used to use. What will the next great leaps in cell phone technology be? Recent developments point the way …

How about a cell phone that never dies? The Nokia Research Centre in Cambridge, UK has developed a prototype of a cell phone that would convert electromagnetic waves—emitted from nearby TV and radio antennas, wifi hotspots, and other sources—into power used to continually charge the battery in standby mode. The researchers involved with the project say their current prototype generates 5 milliwatts of power—the same output as a laser pointer. In three to four years time, the researchers expect to develop a phone that harvests enough energy to produce 50 milliwatts of power, about half what’s needed for current MP3 enabled phones.

Forget keyboards or touch screens; engineers at Duke University in Durham, NC have created a technology that allows people to write messages or draw pictures simply by waving their cell phone. Their program uses accelerometers built into the phone in order to determine the direction of the movement, and translates that into an image or word. They expect a program to be available for download within the next few months. You can see it in action here.

Want about a better view? At Japan’s JPCA electronics show this year, telecommunications company NTT showcased a phone containing a piece of digital paper that pulls out to display things like newspapers and magazines that are hard to read on current cell phone screens. The company is hoping to produce a lower cost, more efficient version by 2015.

Could cell phone GPS navigation get any better? Dutch company SPRX Mobile thinks so. They’ve developed an “augmented reality” program called Layar that uses a cell phone’s built-in compass, GPS and camera to display information about whatever you point your phone at. The information is overlaid on the image provided by your cell phone’s camera. Layar will be available this month in the Netherlands for Android phones and the company plans to launch their application in the US, Germany, and the UK sometime later this year for the iPhone 3G S. You can see a video of how it works here.

Then there’s a beautiful concept developed by Ukrainian designer Alexander Mukomelov. His “Mobile Script” phone also employs a pull out screen—at 9.5” diagonal, as large as some laptops—and he envisions a nano-material covering the phone that can convert sunlight to energy. The technology may not be there yet, but if the rate of cell phone innovation is any indicator, the future may be here sooner than we think.