Do you remember when a mobile phone was just a phone that could move? What did we do before the internet, games, music and lightsaber apps? Bus journeys with chavs were probably less annoying. Looking at the mobile’s journey from its humble single function beginnings to the current iterations whose multifunctionality would make the Swiss Army cry makes you realise that the evolution of the now ubiquitous device has been almost entirely driven by the user. Every innovation and iteration that a phone company makes is motivated by the question "what can we do for the user?"and so far the answer has been to integrate everything that an individual could want into one portable device.
So what does a person feel when they are positioned at the centre of the universe where they can see that everything is being done specifically to make them happy? Self importance, maybe? In the case of Smartphone users, I think that it's safe to say that this is the case for a lot of people (especially early adopters, for whom each new feature becomes a status symbol) who flash their latest piece of technology while they imagine everyone around them swooning in a mixture of envy and respect. The reality is probably a bit less ego-friendly (summed up by the iPhone user mention in this bit of insightful comedy) but they haven't made a 'reality check' app for that yet.
Well this trend of developing solely for the individual may have come to an end, as a few people with their eye on the wider world have started to create some incredibly altruistic add-ons for Smartphones to serve the greater good. This recent report from the BBC details some of the astounding things that can be done with phones that were previously only achievable through high-tech, expensive scientific equipment, including turning them into microscopes, stethoscopes or eye test kits. The ways these clever people are utilising the technology is really quite ingenious and outside the box, with the microscope add-on including no magnifying lenses (the most expensive part of a microscope) and instead recording the shadows of the cells they want to observe. This means that poor, remote communities that don’t have access to expensive, complicated diagnostic tools could be attended to by someone with a bit of training and a relatively inexpensive phone in their pocket.
Could this be an indication that the future of Smartphones lie in 3rd party hardware as well as software innovations and that the phone will start to serve the community rather than the individual? Well it at least demonstrates the incredible versatility and practicality of Smartphones and should get businesses and developers thinking about what they can do to tap into the idea of mobile applications for the masses rather than the individual.
