The Future of 5G WiFi and Smartphones

Like Vijay mentioned in his inaugural post, I also think about technology a lot from the perspective of what my mom would find useful and interesting. When I was an IC designer, the work I did was so microscopic and so far from the end product that it was difficult to explain it to someone who wasn’t in the same field as me. Most people who asked me what I did had their eyes glaze over almost as soon as I started to answer, but now that I’m focused on technology strategy, I can see their eyes light up instead.

So here’s what I told my mom the last time we talked about what I do at work: two years ago, you would call me up to ask me to look something up on the internet for you because you didn’t have a smart phone. Today, you wonder how you survived so many years with your old flip phone. Two years from now, your phone will do so many new things that you’ll wonder how you survived with your first smart phone for so long.

Here are all the things you want your phone to do today (and more) that it will do very soon:

• You’ll have 5G WiFi, which will give you 300+ Mbps throughput for all kinds of applications ranging from streaming TV to fast wireless data transfer to and from your computer
• With 4G LTE cellular data networks, you’ll get significantly higher internet throughput with your phone than you get with your home cable modem today
• With 5G WiFi and Wi-Fi Direct and you’ll be able to use LTE to connect your laptop directly to the internet through your phone when you’re at a hotel or a friend’s house
• Your GPS will be much better at finding your location, especially when you’re indoors
• You’ll have an FM radio that’s so good you can even use it at the gym where all the concrete blocks cellular signals
• You’ll have a mobile credit card payment system integrated into your phone and you’ll be able to pay for things just by tapping your phone on a point of sale terminal in the checkout line in a store
• You won’t have to remember to plug your phone in when you get home – its battery life will be so much better that it won’t die if you go a day without charging!
• And you’ll have a whole bunch of other devices around the house that will play well with your phone. The possibilities are endless: you’ll be able to download and stream a movie to your TV, print wirelessly, turn the house lights on and off remotely, water the garden, check and set the thermostat when you’re not home, get an email when the washing machine and the dryer are done, and when you’re at the supermarket, you’ll even be able to use your fridge’s camera to look inside and see if you’re out of milk!

Needless to say, my mom was impressed and she can’t wait to have a phone that does all of these things. In the coming weeks, I’ll discuss some of the ways that 5G WiFi combines with many of the other wireless technologies coming to the marketplace to enable features I wouldn’t have imagined back when I was texting on my flip phone.