List of Features that make a smartphone smart in 2018?

The smartphone industry changed a lot over the past several years. We happened to see lots of innovative moves that made the smartphones even smarter. What is a smartphone in your view? Any phone that has the touch input with any popular OS is a smartphone. Well, there are several features that make a smartphone smart in 2018. These features are important to make them stand out from the previous years’ devices.

What Features that make a smartphone smart in 2018?

In 2018, it is really hard to choose the best smartphone for your use. Because the smartphone industry is now filled with many brands and many devices. The worst part, they overlap each other. So the options are endless. However, here we are listing the top factors that make a phone smart in 2018. Check them out.

Artificial Intelligence

The buzzword AI is one of the inevitable terms used by smartphone companies. Some implement the AI-powered features on the software layer, while others support hardware accelerated Artificial Intelligence. The Google Assistant for Android and Siri on iPhones do excellent jobs in assisting the users with the AI-features. Also, the Qualcomm releases their powerful SoCs with an integrated NPUs. Even the so-called AI drives the camera technology on smartphones.

Camera technology with AI

The smartphones these days come with jaw-dropping camera sensors and unique techniques. Citing an example, the Huawei’s P20 Pro flagship smartphone does have a triple camera sensor that combines to produce 68MP images. Apart from the hardware side, the companies work on enhancing the camera software integration too. Most of the Android smartphone above the mid-range category now has AI driven camera technology. It enables the phones to auto-detect objects, smart focus, better edge detection while capturing portraits and auto-adjust the camera settings depending on the capturing condition.

Features that make a smartphone smart

Also, most of the top-tier flagship smartphone camera supports 4K Video shooting. The smartphones are capable of replacing the conventional point & shoot camera.

Audio technology

The audio delivery through the smartphones nowadays a big deal for the mainstream companies. They try to implement their premium range smartphones with Hi-Fi Audio, QDAC technology, Dolby Atmos, etc. Many companies still retain the conventional 3.5mm headphone jack to maintain better audio output through the earphones.

Security & Privacy

The companies are being forced to give much priority to the privacy concerns of the users. So, they do implement many security features from the basic level. Most of the smartphones have a fingerprint scanner, apart from the Password/PIN/Pattern. Recently, companies started to release phones with face recognition, an iris scanner, and other biometric unlocking features. Vivo and Huawei already started putting the fingerprint scanners under the screen for more security and better design.

Networking speed

Well, the networking speed matters while you are using a smartphone that has an internet connection twenty-four-seven. The newly introduced modems and network capabilities on the processors allow faster data transfer. The companies are currently under the final development of the 5G network. Ahead of it, Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 850 with X20 modem. The Cat.18 LTE modem supports data speed up to 1.2Gbps downlink. It also supports new spectrum bands.

Performance

Smartphones, both Android and iOS, nowadays equip powerful hardware features and processors under the hood. The Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets that most of the Android smartphones come with, updated much these days. The company tries to reduce the space between transistors so that they could implement more in the same space.

Qualcomm Snapdragon

The chipset companies are currently under the development of 7nm chipsets, that would even showcase PC-like performance. Apple’s A11/A12 Bionic & Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 have NPU for AI, DSP for machine learning. With the integrated smart features, the devices have attained the maximum performance and excellent optimization. The smartphones do learn the usage habits and optimize the device hardware utilization.

App usage controls

The latest addition to the popular operating systems – Android and iOS are the new app usage controls settings. This helps in getting rid of the smartphone addiction. As soon as the stable versions of the operating systems hit smartphones, the devices will be able to monitor the app usage and put a control to it. The phones in 2018 will soon show you how addicted you are to the smartphone and specific apps. This, the ‘digital well-being’ feature, would be one among the most helpful.

Smartphones are ‘smart’ mainly because of the features mentioned above. There are a lot of other features that make smartphones fabulous, but these play the vital roles. How do you feel about the new changes in the smartphone industry to make devices smarter?

About the author

Akhil G

Skilled technology writer and widely-read journalist. Social media Influencer, FB India Media Partner. Managing multiple news portals and writing for many. Google Hall Of Fame award winner. Youth Icon of the year - Government of Kerala 2018.