Written by
Matthew Miller, Contributor
Matthew Miller
Contributor
Matthew Miller started using mobile devices in 1997 and has been writing news, reviews, and opinion pieces ever since. He was a co-host, with Kevin Tofel, of the MobileTechRoundup podcast for 13 years and authored three Wiley Companion series books.
Full Bio
Posted in Smartphones and Cell Phones
on December 31, 2021
| Topic: Mobility
25 years ago I picked up my first US Robotics Pilot 1000 PDA and I’ve experienced incredible advancements in mobile technology since then. Smartphone form factors stabilized on metal frames with glass back and front panels a couple of years ago with a heavy focus on camera performance in 2021.
For many years we saw the “megapixel race” in smartphone cameras, but most companies have settled on 12MP as a standard for smartphone photography. The software algorithms and intelligence were advanced and perfected in 2021 with Google and Apple taking computational photography to the next level. It’s awesome that smartphones help you take great pictures, but there is a lot more to a phone for productivity than taking photos.
See also: Best camera phone: Take the best photos and videos
Google released Android 12 in late 2021 while Apple brought us iOS 15 and both of these major updates offer glimpses of what we can expect in 2022. Our phones will finally start to use intelligence, data, and computing power to take on the heavy lifting without our constant interaction while providing us with an experience where we can more easily connect with others, focus on the people and world around us, and trust that our smartphones are serving in the role as valued personal assistants.
About a decade ago I attended a Mobius influencer event where we brainstormed ideas of where we saw smartphones in the future and it has taken much longer than many in my group envisioned to get to a place where phones were taking care of things in the background based on patterns captured from vast amounts of data and then using this data to provide a personal and focused user experience that is unique to each individual.
Google Android 12
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