The “Next Big Thing” For Cell Phones

On Monday, Nokia’s chief technology officer spoke at the CommunicAsia telecom event in Singapore, where his remarks on innovation seemed to echo - or, perhaps, move beyond - the impending arrival of Apple’s iPhone. The exec, Tero Ojanpera, focused on the two elements he and his company consider critical in pushing mobile technology forward:

“Optical sensors and touch will be the next big things… I believe there will be a lot of innovation around these.”

On its face, that statement may seem fairly innocuous, but the long-term ramifications are pretty fascinating coming from the world’s largest cell phone manufacturer. The iPhone is poised to introduce full touch-screen technology to a mass market later this summer, and that innovation clearly carries with it a certain “wow� factor. In fairness, though, touch screens have been around for a little while; room for advancement is limited to expanding general use and perfecting the interface.

What may be more interesting is that Ojanpera puts so much emphasis on “optical sensors�. That’s the technology that allows a phone to react to movement; in other words, it’s what automatically shifts the iPhone’s display from horizontal to vertical, based on the position of the device.

In Singapore, though, talk swirled around other potential applications. It seems likely that optical sensors will allow cell phone use to become more intuitive, in a way; possibilities include shaking a phone to place a call, or turning the phone 180 degrees to open an internet connection.

If engineers are able to design systems which revolve around natural movements, and make it simple to operate a cell phone with one hand, this advance could be critical - especially with the advent of virtual keypads, which make one-handed operation more difficult. Just think of everything Nintendo’s been able to accomplish with the Wii using similar technology… and it’s not even a year old.

It’s exciting to consider what might come out of some of the industry’s experimental labs… sooner, rather than later.