Section
Smartphones
Title Here
Smartphones: Past, Present,
and Future
Nayeem Islam, Qualcomm
Roy Want, Google
F or most of us, it’s hard to imagine
a time when we couldn’t read our
email using a mobile phone or post pic-
tures of events and then instantly share
them. Today, we use smartphones like
personal assistants to search for and
locate stores, hotels, and restaurants. We
even use our smartphones to monitor
our health through activity logging, find
our location on maps, watch videos, and
buy products on the Internet. We have
lived through an unprecedented revolu-
tion in which cellphones have evolved
from devices primarily used to make
phone calls, to computing devices that
let us stay connected with other people
and information at all times.
Here, we review this evolution—dis-
cussing how technology finally caught
up with the vision of an integrated
device—and consider what’s next on
the horizon. In particular, we focus on
six trends that we predict will strongly
influence the function and design of
future smartphones.
History of the Mobile
Phone
As long ago as the 1970s, researchers
such as Theodore G. Paraskevakos con-
ceptualized devices that combined tele-
phony and computing. Two decades
later, in the early 1990s, several pro-
totype multifunction devices finally
appeared (see Table 1). Many of these
prototypes were bulky, ran on low data-
rate networks at speeds less than 100
kbps ­(typically 14.4 kbps), and had only
Published by the IEEE CS n 1536-1268/14/$31.00 © 2014 IEEE PER VA SI V E computing
Authorized licensed use limited to: b-on: UNIVERSIDADE DA BEIRA INTERIOR. Downloaded on May 23,2023 at 20:15:45 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
Editor: Editor Name Here
Editor:nRoyEditor
a few useful applications. The user inter-
face was typically a small, restricted key-
board, and novel (but painfully slow)
use of the number keypad allowed for
text input. Nonetheless, these devices
hinted at the tremendous possibilities
for an integrated device.
Later came IBM’s Simon, Nokia’s
Communicator, and Qualcomm’s PdQ,
which were launched through the latter
1990s, combining an expanded com-
puting and phone functionality. These
devices were more generally character-
ized as feature phones, rather than smart-
phones, but that changed in 1999, when
Japan’s NTT DoCoMo introduced the
i-mode system.
The one major thing missing from
the user experience of these devices was
rich content, and the i-mode system
let mobile users access sophisticated
Internet services, such as websites and
Internet email. The initial i-mode sys-
tem took advantage of websites written
in a restricted subset of HTML, called
C-HTML, enabling data to be viewed
on a mobile phone browser with a lim-
ited display. The i-mode system had
widespread adoption and attracted tens
of millions of subscribers within a few
short years of its release. Clearly, i-mode
devices brought increased functionality,
facilitated by higher network speeds that
let users have a more compelling user
experience than previous technologies.
At about the same time, the Black-
berry smartphone became estab-
lished and started flourishing in the
Wantaffiliation
n Google here nn roywant@acm.org
editor email here
US market. However, success was
mainly limited to enterprise custom-
ers who wanted secure email access.
The Blackberry was small, but with a
well-designed full-feature miniature
keyboard, suited to rapid two-thumb
typing, but it never became a fully gen-
eral-purpose mobile computing device.
In the 2000s, 3G networks were
deployed, further increasing speeds and
the reach of high-speed data. Other devel-
opments, such as Qualcomm’s Binary
Runtime Environment for Wireless
(BREW), also allowed cellular carriers
to deploy mobile ecosystems worldwide.
In 2007, Apple launched its iPhone,
setting a new standard for mobile
computer-integrated telephony, with an
open developer community contribut-
ing a wide spectrum of novel capabili-
ties through Apple’s app store opened in
2008. Subsequently, Google released the
Android operating system as the AOSP
(Android Open Source Project), which
was adopted by many smartphone
handset manufacturers and launched
worldwide. Accelerated by both open
software and the wide variety of phone
hardware it could run on, the developer
community expanded even more rap-
idly, creating its own extensive app store.
Today’s Smartphones
According to IDC, Android and iOS
currently lead the world smartphone
market, with Android holding a share
of approximately 81.1 percent, and iOS
holding 15.2 percent. The remaining
89
 SmartPhones

SmartPhones

Table 1
market share is Windows Mobile at 2.7
A history of the mobile phone leading up to the modern smartphone.
(Only models with significant evolution in phone capability are listed.) percent, Blackberry at 0.5 percent, and
others at 0.6 percent (see Figure 1).1
Year Cell phone model Company This revolution has made Internet
1973 “First Cellphone” demo Motorola applications, once only available to desk-
1984 DynaTAC 8000X Motorola top users, easily accessible to anybody
1989 MicroTAC 9800X Motorola with a mobile device, resulting in almost
1992 1011 Nokia
anytime, anywhere access. Along the way,
several innovations have been critical for
1994 Simon IBM
the adoption of smartphones—namely,
1996 9000 Communicator Nokia
high-speed data networks such as 3G
1999 pdQ Qualcomm and 4G (LTE), which have been widely
1999 9110 Nokia deployed; modern operating systems with
1999 8210 Nokia easy-to-program interfaces and rich pro-
1999 850 Blackberry gramming tools; and business models for
deploying applications such as app stores.
2000 R320 Ericsson
Components such as the capacitive mul-
2002 SCP-5300 Sanyo
titouch screen that let our fingers easily
2002 N21i (i-mode) NEC zoom and select graphical components
2003 7230 BlackBerry of a complex user interface are equally
2004 Razr V3 (Symbian) Motorola important ingredients for improved
2005 II Sidekick usability, reducing the difficulty of inter-
2007 iPhone (iOS) Apple
acting with a pocket-sized device for
real-world tasks. These innovations have
2007 m550i (i-mode) Sony Ericsson
transformed the mobile phone ecosystem.
2009 Droid (Android) Motorola
2011 HD7 (Windows Phone 7) HTC What’s Next?
2012 Galaxy S3 (Android) Samsung As we look forward to the next decade, the
2012 iPhone 5 (iOS) Apple smartphone experience is about to change
2012 Lumia 920 (Windows Phone 8) Nokia once again. Here, we look into our crystal
ball and predict tremendous growth in the
2014 Galaxy S5 (Android) Samsung
following six areas (see Table 2).
2014 iPhone 6 (iOS) Apple

Personal Computers
Smartphones are already being
designed around multicore proces-
sors and will follow a path to similar
80
desktop and laptop performance, only
70 lagging behind due to limited battery
60 capacity and operating temperatures.
Percentage

50 However, desktops already have more

40 processing performance than is neces-
sary for many common applications,
30
and a lower-power smartphone can
20 still meet many of our requirements. As
10 CMOS transistor technology continues
0 to improve, the future smartphone will
be capable of all but the most compute-
Q1

Q2

Q3

Q4

Q1

Q2

Q3

Q4

Q1

Q2

Q3

Q4

Q1

2011 2012 2013 2014 intensive tasks required for our daily
work. Some of the improvements in
Android iOS Windows phone Blackberry OS Others
performance will result from system-
on-chip (SoC) designs, which might
Figure 1. The market share of the various mobile OSs by year.1 include highly specialized low-power

90 PER VA SI V E computing  www.computer.org/pervasive

Authorized licensed use limited to: b-on: UNIVERSIDADE DA BEIRA INTERIOR. Downloaded on May 23,2023 at 20:15:45 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 SmartPhones

Table 2
Six major trends affecting future smartphone design and use.

Trends
Personal computing
Internet of Things (IoT)
Multimedia delivery
Low power operation
Wearable computing
Context awareness
Impact
Smartphones will become our primary computing platform and will dock with nearby displays and key-
boards. They will become our computation, storage, and network hub.
The smartphone will be the on-ramp for the IoT, letting you locate and interact with the world around
you as easily as you currently search for information on the Internet.
The smartphone will rival more traditional platforms, such as the TV or desktop computer, for watching
videos, and even storing libraries of multimedia content.
The battery in smartphones will last longer, aided by new software structuring techniques and low-
power hardware accelerators.
The smartphone will be foldable and will take on unconventional shapes. It will merge into a diverse set
of wearable technologies, from wrist-mounted devices to glasses and extensions of our clothing.
Smartphones will be more context-aware and able to adapt to nearby people, places, and things.

accelerator hardware for common
applications, such as video compression
or cryptographic encryption.
New memory technologies that have
higher capacities, consume less power,
and are cheaper will enable smartphones
to store terabytes of data. This will lead
to a new breed of applications that store
personal content and context, enhancing
the speed of access and privacy of user
data. As a result, sophisticated apps will
be developed that mine person data to
present relevant information or that take
necessary automatic actions given a per-
sonal context.
The combination of enhanced pro-
cessing and super dense storage capacity
will enable a new generation of compu-
tational photography and augmented
reality applications. With memories
that are effectively more extensive and
accurate than our own, there will also
be applications that augment our own
minds, helping us remember people and
events, supported by sound and imagery
captured years before.
Internet of Things (IoT)
The IoT, or Internet of everything,
has been talked about in academia
for a long time but hasn’t become an
­everyday reality. The idea of IoT refers
to connecting together all the electronic
devices around us—such as TV, cars,
and thermostats—and enabling them to
be discoverable and Internet connected.
This communication is characterized
by low-power, low-bandwidth, and
low-latency connectivity, in contrast
to the need for high-bandwidth links
used in the general Internet. Exam-
ples of technologies that facilitate IoT
are near-field communication and the
nascent Bluetooth Low Energy stan-
dard, which can be used in conjunction
with existing cellular and Wi-Fi radio
technologies. As these newer standards
are used more widely, the mobile phone
will become a control and sensing hub.
The applications of IoT are immense
and can take over areas that have tra-
ditionally been the domain of bespoke
solutions, such as home security and
home automation. For example, you’ll
be able to receive security alerts on your
phone from home sensors while travel-
ing or shut down appliances you acci-
dently left on. A smartphone connected
to devices in the home can also moni-
tor energy usage, leading to energy and
monetary savings and increased conve-
nience. However, the real benefit is the
ability to enter an area that you have
not encountered before and easily con-
trol nearby devices, or make use of sen-
sors that are discovered in the proximity
(with appropriate security safeguards).
Multimedia Delivery
The majority of data traffic on the Inter-
net has been driven by streaming vid-
eos. Initially, users just watched videos
on personal computers, but that usage
model is expanding to tablets and smart-
phones. Furthermore, viewing 8,000–
16,000 pixel images will become com-
mon for future smartphones. This will
be accompanied by smartphones with
larger screens, or devices known today as
phablets—something that is in-between a
phone and tablet. There will soon be a lot
more devices with five-inch screens.
The challenge won’t be the screen
resolution but the enormous comput-
ing power in the CPU and GPU, and the
hardware interconnects required to move
such large amounts of data inside the
SoC. The cellular service provider proto-
cols supported by the handsets must also
evolve to support the download of high-
resolution streaming video. These issues
will be addressed through new wireless
standards and new protocols.2
Low Power Operation
Battery technology for smartphones has
not kept up with demand in terms of the
energy requirements of sophisticated
hardware, such as multicore CPUs,
GPUs, and large screens, and of appli-
cations such as video on demand, mul-
tiplayer games, and always-connected
social networking. Promising battery
solutions are on the horizon, such as
technology being developed at the Stan-
ford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC)
with a goal of 5x the capacity of conven-
tional Li-ion,3 but it’s not likely that it
will be enough to satisfy all the energy
needs of smartphone applications.
However, improvements in CMOS
semiconductor technology can reduce
power consumption on mobile devices by
using smaller lithography and improved
transistor design, such as high-k gate
dielectrics that reduce leakage current
and hence static power consumption.

October–december 2014 PER VA SI V E computing 91

Authorized licensed use limited to: b-on: UNIVERSIDADE DA BEIRA INTERIOR. Downloaded on May 23,2023 at 20:15:45 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 SmartPhones
SmartPhones
An intelligent system’s software can
also reduce power by managing the hard-
ware resources of the phone and using
the most energy-efficient components,
and by ensuring various parts of the SoC
are turned off to conserve power when
not in use. For the most popular appli-
cations, using energy-efficient hardware
accelerators will also extend battery life.
New advances in mobile heteroge-
neous processors and run-time sched-
uling will allow computation to be
offloaded to the most power-efficient
core. These new runtimes will be one of
the main drivers reducing mobile phone
power consumption in the future.
Wearable Computing
In the near term, flexible electronics
will enable smartphones to be fold-
able and conform to our bodies—in
tight clothing, for example. However,
in the future, the entire form factor of
a smartphone will likely diverge into a
set of technologies that are more read-
ily associated with wearable comput-
ing. The smartphone is equally likely
to evolve from a pocket device to one
that’s on your wrist or is part of your
eyeglasses (such as Google Glass). The
smartphone might also be integrated
into our clothing or fashion accessories.
A distributed phone platform makes a
lot of sense from a functional perspec-
tive. By placing the I/O components
close enough to your eyes and ears,
it can directly augment your senses;
allowing processing technology, storage
devices, and batteries to be placed in
more convenient locations on the body.
A key ingredient for wearable comput-
ing is access to power. In existing phones,
all components use the same battery.
Users only need to charge one device
(battery) to have a working system. By
distributing the components of a smart-
phone, the battery must be replicated, and
then all these batteries must be charged.
This is a challenge, but it could be solved
by reducing the power consumption of a
component so it can operate for its life-
time on one battery, or by scavenging the
energy from the environment, ­perhaps
92 PER VA SI V E computing 
Authorized licensed use limited to: b-on: UNIVERSIDADE DA BEIRA INTERIOR. Downloaded on May 23,2023 at 20:15:45 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
making use of body motion, or the heat
differential between the human body and
the outside temperature.4
Context Awareness
Context-aware operation for a smart-
phone enables a better user experi-
ence by adapting smartphone behavior
based on location, nearby objects, and
characteristics of the user. In fact, any
parameter or state that can be sensed
by a phone can improve context-aware
operation. For example, the phone can
show a map based on your current
location or dim the display when you
put the phone near your ear. Context
is determined through sensors, which
can be classified as soft sensors, based
on data triggers, or hard sensors, built
from physical components.
Soft sensors provide an output when
a virtual state matches the trigger condi-
tion—for example, receiving an email or
an entry in your calendar. In the future,
as apps become more interdependent,
the use of software sensors will increas-
ingly exploit all available information.
Hard sensors are based on compo-
nents that are sensitive to a physical
parameter. They’re usually attached to
the phone itself, or nearby, and con-
nected through a wireless link. Examples
include a 3D accelerometer and a solid-
state compass, also integrated with most
modern smartphones, or a Bluetooth
pedometer (such as the FitBit Flex) that
wirelessly reports the user’s daily step
count. In the future, there will be more
hardware sensors attached to the phone
platform, and probably many other sen-
sors on our body to which the phone can
connect. It is likely that standards will
also be created for modular physical sen-
sor technologies, letting users enhance
phones by snapping on a variety of sen-
sors, chosen for specific applications.
S martphones have been one of the
greatest drivers of pervasive com-
puting. We’re living in exciting times, as
the pace of innovation and development
in this area continues to accelerate. The
six trends listed here follow from what
we see occurring in our industry, but
there are sure to be surprises.
The ultimate smartphone might well
be a bio-electronic device, perhaps a
neural implant, and might even derive its
power from our own body c­ hemistry. At
that point, we could potentially be con-
nected to the Internet, and hence each
other, at all times. This is reminiscent of
the fictional Star Trek’s Borg collective,
an adversary of the human race—and
maybe something that we should avoid!
In the meantime, smartphones will
continue to provide us with a perva-
sive computing platform that’s evolv-
ing almost as fast as we can invent new
applications and continuing to support
our needs for work, entertainment, and
education.
References
1. “Smartphone OS Market Share, Q2
2014,” IDC, 2014; www.idc.com/­
prodserv/smartphone-os-market-share.jsp.
2. “The 1000x Data Challenge,” Qual-
comm, 2014; www.qualcomm.
com/#/1000x.
3. “A Look Inside SLAC’s Battery Lab,”
SLAC, 17 July 2014; https://www6.slac.
stanford.edu/news/2014-07-17-slac-
battery-lab.aspx.
4. IEEE Pervasive Computing, special
issue on energy harvesting and conserva-
tion, Jan.–Mar. 2005; www.computer.
org/csdl/mags/pc/2005/01/index.html.
Nayeem Islam is a vice
president and head of Qual-
comm Research Silicon
Valley. He leads a group
that conducts research and
development in various
aspects of mobile computing. Contact him at
nayeem.islam@gmail.com.
Roy Want is a research sci-
entist at Google and an IEEE
and ACM Fellow. Contact
him at roywant@google.
com.
www.computer.org/pervasive