It is easy to look back on technology changes and see that we had plenty of warnings that we clearly missed at the time. VCRs gave way to DVD players, which in turn have given way to streaming services. Brick cellphones evolved into flip phones, which were swapped out for two-way pager phones and then wiped out by the iPhone model. Tape players gave way to the Walkman CD player, which gave way to the iPod, which also ended up in the iPhone model.

Sometimes, trends that seem obvious fail to materialize. Laser disks never got to critical mass before DVDs arrived on the scene, and 3D TV, which seemed so obviously next, wasn’t.

I think we soon will see another big industry shift, but some key elements are missing, so I don’t want anyone to think that your smartphone will be obsolete this year. The change I’m calling may be closer to 2020 than 2017.

I’ll explain why smartphones are becoming obsolescent and end with my product of the week: the thing that I think is a big part of what is to come.

Smartphone Problems

A number of issues with how we use smartphones need to be addressed. First, the things literally can kill you. I’m not talking about their catching fire, though clearly that has been a big issue. I’m talking about the fact that people want to use these things while walking and driving. This practice often ends very badly.

One of the scariest things on the road right now is looking in your rear-view mirror when you’ve stopped at a light, and seeing the driver of the car coming up behind you looking at a phone. You just pray the driver looks up before a motor lands in your back.

We’ve made using the phones illegal. We’ve charged people whose phone use has caused deadly traffic accidents with manslaughter, and given them drunk driving-like jail terms and financial penalties. It is pretty clear that for folks who are attention span-challenged — or those driving, walking or bike riding on the same roads with them — that smartphones are still killers.

If we want to save lives, we need to rethink how device can be used more safely.

Technology Changes

Although smartphones have gotten bigger, display resolution and costs have dropped, so we actually could make displays smaller while still showcasing the same or more information. This is important, because it means that in theory, we could place them closer to the line of sight, allowing users to see both the display and what is coming.

Military pilots have expensive rigs like this so they can see targeting and instrument data while remaining focused on what their planes and helicopters physically have in front of them. These rigs give them additional viewing options in low light, short of putting on night vision goggles that typically have far more limited fields of view. In other words, head-mounted technology has massively advanced over the last decade.

Voice command certainly has come a long way. Many of us now have Amazon or Google home tech products that we can order around, and some of us have them connected to other smart home functions so we can order around other things in our house.

Following on this tech are natural language interfaces that can better understand us without learning commands, tied to deep learning cloud systems that let us interact with systems more conversationally when we have the bandwidth. We are getting very close to the point where we’ll simply be able to talk to our devices and have them not only follow our orders but converse with us, providing ever richer services and information without our having to type a single word.

This idea is tied to AI-based chatbots. We’ve already seen products like IBM’s Watson begin to cut a relatively impressive swath through the initial opportunity for ever richer voice-enabled cloud offerings.

Tied to deep learning systems, we could have the equivalent of autocomplete for complex decisions and tasks. For instance, you could simply ask for a letter to be written to a sibling and then provide an outline of the content, which could include pictures, videos and even interactive elements, mostly pulled from your cloud digital history and apps.

A four-page letter could take you 30 seconds to summarize, with the cloud system doing the rest. Now apply this to business proposals, correspondence, or even thank you notes. The output, based on an analysis of your other correspondence, would look like it came from you — but likely would have better sentence structure and punctuation, and no typos.

Putting It All Together

What I’m anticipating is a multilevel solution with a head-mounted fully functional smartphone-like device with a screen below one eye. It would deploy when needed, kind of like a more attractive version of what Boba Fett used in Star Wars but without the helmet.

It would be a fully functional computer, likely based on the smartphone hardware and OS to get developers, size and connectivity right. It would be connected to a set of services that would provide the chatbot AI, deep learning and data connectivity it would need, and it would have a significant fashion element so folks wouldn’t have a Google Glass moment when wearing it.

I expect it would have a camera, though, so it could gain context and provide capabilities like facial and object recognition, as well as warn you if you’re too focused on the screen and about to walk into danger. I expect an option here would be a low light or infrared camera, so it also could help you see in the dark.

Wrapping Up: All the Elements Exist

Virtually all of the core elements to create this thing exist, but they don’t exist in any one vendor. Those that have the client device capability generally don’t have the back-end services or hardware yet. However, nothing says they couldn’t partner to get there. Companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Lenovo and Alibaba have showcased resources in line with this kind of an offering, and people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson have the vision and personal resources.

For me, the question isn’t if, it is when — and who will take the first risky step. Like every technology that proceeded it, the smartphone eventually will be replaced. I think it will be by a follow-on to my product of the week, tied to a service that slowly is being birthed in the cloud.

Early smartphones didn’t look like the iPhone, and I’m not suggesting the RealWear HMT-1 is the iPhone’s replacement. Still, even though its focus is more on industrial use than the consumer market, this product does have the core elements to make it a viable proof of concept.

It is a full Android tablet you wear on your head. It has noise cancellation microphones, and it can operate by voice command (and it could connect to systems that use a full natural voice interface). It has a small, high-resolution display that sits just out of your line of sight, and it has a camera (with light source) that it could use to identify and share with a service or person what you’re viewing.

RealWear HMT-1

I’ve worn it, and it is acceptably light, though its industrial focus does cause it to miss on being attractive and unobtrusive. (It is designed to attach to a helmet, making it far closer to what Boba Fett actually would use than what you’d likely buy.)

It’s estimated to cost around US$1,000, and even at low volume that is in line with high-end smartphone pricing. It should be far safer and cheaper than other head-mounted solutions potentially targeting smartphone replacement.

While the HMT-1 actually is targeted at industrial use, it could form the design basis for a product that eventually could replace the iPhone wave of smartphone offerings. It could be far safer — and with the anticipated services, far more useful — than what we have today. As a result, the RealWear HMT-1 is my product of the week.

Rob Enderle has been an ECT News Network columnist since 2003. His areas of interest include AI, autonomous driving, drones, personal technology, emerging technology, regulation, litigation, M&E, and technology in politics. He has undergrad degrees in merchandising and manpower management, and an MBA in human resources, marketing and computer science. He is also a certified management accountant. Enderle currently is president and principal analyst of the Enderle Group. He formerly served as a senior research fellow at Giga Information Group and Forrester. Email Rob.

OxygenOS is the foundation of the OnePlus 3T’s Great User Experience

OxygenOS has been OnePlus’s default and primary ROM for almost two years now, first released for the OnePlus One as a flashable zip for users to break away from the increasingly-unsupported but excellent CyanogenMod S ROMs their phone originally shipped with.

This software offering took center-stage with the OnePlus 2 back in 2015, a year full of devices we mostly remember for their flaws rather than their virtues. The OnePlus 2 itself almost encompassed all of the issues many people had with 2015 flagships — its Snapdragon 810 held it back, it removed up-and-coming features like NFC for no good reason, and then offered me-too (or me-first) hardware that wasn’t properly utilized, like the Type-C port devoid of USB 3.0 speeds or fast charging. OnePlus had a really good thing with their original “flagship killer”, but they blew it with their sequel, the punchline being the comical label of “2016 flagship killer”. The OnePlus 2 was an exercise in disappointing compromises, yet there was a short period of time through which I used that device exclusively despite having prettier, faster, and less-compromised smartphones within my reach. It was all thanks to OxygenOS, the one redeeming quality that allowed me to enjoy the OnePlus 2.

OxygenOS back then was a lot more bare-bones than it is now, with a slightly different design philosophy. Back at their originally unveiling ahead of the OnePlus 2’s launch, we learned that OnePlus wanted to create a slim and fast experience, not unlike the CyanogenMod 11S ROM their first phone shipped with. The AMAs with the software team further revealed that they were emphasizing staying close to stock, but adding tactful features that could only add to the experience. They somewhat nailed it with their first attempt, and OxygenOS was indeed extremely close to Stock Android, with relatively-fast performance on the OnePlus 2 and some features that preemptively emulated future features from the then-upcoming Marshmallow, while borrowing some custom ROM favorites as well.

The Good

In a way, custom ROMs were part of Oxygen’s DNA — by then, the OnePlus One already built a reputation among enthusiasts for being developer-friendly, and plenty of users loved the fact that they could get whatever feature or customization they wanted going on it. It was no surprise, then, that OxygenOS – a ROM that was also developed by some legacy custom ROM developers that OnePlus hired – would offer a similar feel; it really felt like a lightweight custom ROM in many ways, though with a higher degree of consumer-grade polish (granted, it still had a long way to go, as we’ll detail below).

It was with the OnePlus 3 that OxygenOS really got to shine. No longer was the lightweight ROM overburdened by faulty silicon — now it packed a faster, more-efficient Snapdragon 820 flanked by a copious 6GB of RAM and zippy UFS 2.0 storage. The OnePlus 3’s OxygenOS kept all of what made the original great, then further added to its feature set once more, in tactful and measured ways. I would go as far as saying that my initial impressions with OxygenOS on the OnePlus 3 beat those I’ve had with both any other OEM stock ROM, and even recent OxygenOS releases that haven’t matched the surprise I found while originally reviewing the device. It was a breath of fresh air, and while we see a relatively larger number of OEMs offering Stock Android ROMs today, I think OnePlus nailed it there and then. Some Nougat features, speedy responsiveness, a proper dark theme to make use of the device’s AMOLED panel, and an aesthetically-pleasing UI were all positives I loved from the get-go. Then OnePlus had to change some of that, momentarily.

The Ugly

The OnePlus 3’s Community Builds adopted a new user interface that deviated from the Stock approach of the original OxygenOS, changing colors and generally making it less attractive with worse proportions and animations in system UI elements like the notification panel, recents menu and settings. This wasn’t surprising when one considers that these changes were instrumental in the eventual merger of the OxygenOS and HydrogenOS frameworks.

The company figured out that a unified team working on a unified base with different application layers could help speed up updates, and address one of the more-criticized aspects of previous devices. The Community Builds, then, were growing pains that culminated in the (luckily short-lived) Marshmallow stock ROM for the OnePlus 3T. The concept of having community builds with various testing channels is brilliant and a great community engine, but at the time, said updates had disappointed me.

It felt like change for the sake of change, perhaps a petty compromise between Hydrogen and Oxygen

In my OnePlus 3T review, I noted I wasn’t a big fan of this new approach to software. While it didn’t deviate too much from the original OxygenOS, none of the changes felt clever or meaningful, and none improved upon the simplicity and effortlessness of the original package.

It felt like change for the sake of change, perhaps a petty compromise between HydrogenOS and OxygenOS, given both featured such disparate design philosophies. Enthusiast outcry and fan feedback ensued, and the company reversed the change with the Nougat update, which offers a Pixel-like blue for its default accent color and a more traditional user interface. It was at this point where OxygenOS not only redeemed itself, but also became my favorite flavor of Android– finally surpassing the Pixel XL’s, which I held in the highest regard.

The Bad

OxygenOS has also had (and overcame) many hurdles and criticism. Some of its more pointless features stubbornly remain in there, such as the Shelf feature which was permissible on the OnePlus 2, as it was a promise of things to come, yet is still a not worthy contender today. There have been numerous conscious decisions and unconscious mistakes, though, that temporarily opaqued the better parts of the ROM. For example, upon the release of the OnePlus 3, OxygenOS was massively underutilizing the hardware of the device. I was one of the few that called this out and proposed a solution, and OnePlus was quick to act and react to the criticism by modifying its settings and allowing for more apps to remain in the background. Still, it made us all ponder, why would they not allow their 6GB smartphone to actually offer the capabilities they proudly advertised?

Another short-lived complaint was the exclusion of an sRGB mode to balance out the saturated default calibration of OnePlus’ “Optic AMOLED” panel. The company set out to make its display stand out and went as far as giving it its own buzzword, yet it turned out to be extremely color inaccurate and saturated, and it even displayed some banding and contrast issues off the bat. AnandTech and independent reporters were quick to point this out, and OnePlus offered reviewers an OTA with a proposed fix which quickly trickled down to consumer builds. It was, once more, a quick fix, but it still begs the question: why would OnePlus advertise Optic AMOLED as a better viewing experience, when no metrics backed that up? Especially since the changes were mostly calibration, which wasn’t well-received at launch (luckily, sRGB mode ended up being surprisingly color-accurate).

And that’s not all. We also caught OnePlus cheating on benchmarks, through a code block that specifically targeted certain application packages by name, and then adjusted scaling behavior to minimize score variance. This was unacceptable and the company addressed it quickly enough, but at the same time, once more it makes us wonder: why would they? It’s not like it introduced critical gains, it’s not like the OnePlus 3 couldn’t sustain class-leading performance without artificial cheating mechanisms. We suspect that it might have been a result of the merger between the two different software teams, but that wouldn’t excuse the previously-mentioned decisions.

Nor would it excuse a plethora of decisions that raised our concerns over the phone’s security and software integrity, with some of the problems we reported like IMEI leaking being wholly within their knowledge and control. None of this can be dismissed, even if it doesn’t directly impact our forward-facing UX (the point of this article).

I do take solace in the fact that OnePlus has been addressing all of these issues, however, and listening to feedback from its forum-goers and enthusiasts from communities like XDA and reddit, as well as reviewers. We’ve actually influenced OxygenOS and prompted OnePlus to fix issues, remove non-sense or add or refine useful functionality. The company is clearly open to feedback, and while they have messed up their software support on previous devices, they seem to committed enough to the OnePlus 3 and OnePlus 3T. Which brings me to my next and final point.

One of OnePlus’ Crown Jewels

It is actually really impressive, from a customer’s perspective, to see OxygenOS evolve so much with such frequent updates and ongoing feature inclusions. It has seen near-constant improvement, though not always consistent. In this regard, OnePlus has redeemed itself from the atrocious support that its older devices received (and are still suffering). If ignoring the OnePlus X and OnePlus 2 was instrumental in achieving a better user experience on the OnePlus 3, then I am inclined to say it was a smart decision for the future of the company. Truth be told, OxygenOS has improved a lot and has adopted many, many new and useful features while cleaning up its mistakes and embracing a new personality through UI refinements. All of this wasn’t without growing pains, and it’s been a tumultuous ride at times, but when I look at the final package I can’t help but recognize the software is near-perfect for the demographic I belong to, the niche I am part of (and you probably are too), and what I personally expect from my device.

I am not the kind of person that believes Stock Android is an intrinsic good and a positive aspect of whatever phone decides to feature it, either. In fact, I find myself liking OxygenOS, and even TouchWiz for that matter, now that they are further from Stock — it just needs to be done right. The short-lived community builds pre-Nougat hadn’t done it well enough, just like Samsung’s awkward and early half-baked adoption of Material Design hadn’t done it right either. Now, both OxygenOS and TouchWiz have found their own identity and a matching UI that enables both to offer the features they need for the people they target. Not all OEM ROMs have been evolving equally in the past couple of years, and in my opinion, none have done it better than OxygenOS in the end, not even TouchWiz which I also believe has been getting a lot better.

It’s not that it’s close to Stock, but that it’s close-enough in all the right places, and that it changes what could use a better solution. It’s also not that it’s just fast, but that it’s as fast as I expect from this hardware. The features they added are ones I use frequently, such as scrolling screenshots and quick capture editing, and while they aren’t unique (Samsung, in particular, has introduced much of this way before), they are implemented rather seamlessly at no expense to the user. There are still bits and pieces to address (I, for one, would like to see more customization) but considering that this ROM was a quick patch to a rough legal problem, devised just over two years ago, OnePlus has done a very good job with OxygenOS and it makes for an exceptional daily driver.

What do you think of Oxygen OS? I want to hear your opinion as well, so sound off below!

Samsung made some interesting decisions with the Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8+ this year. Not only did they remove the hardware home button that has defined the South Korean tech giant for so many years, but they also stretched the screen more than they ever have before. This resulted in a higher screen-to-body ratio than they’ve had in the past, and allowed them to fit bigger screens in a smaller form factor.

A number of smartphone OEMs have launched two different versions of their flagship over the last few years. One of them has been smaller (generally around 5″ to 5.2″) while also offering a larger version (at around 5.5″ to 5.7″) for those who like a bigger screen. Samsung could have kept with the same screen size this year as they did last year, which would have produced much smaller phones overall. Instead they settled on a 5.8″ display for the regular Galaxy S8 and 6.2″ for the larger Galaxy S8+.

This is rather unique because phones with a 6.2″ display are very hard to come by these days. Most OEMs will not take the risk and use a phone with a display that large for a flagship. So the OEMs who do release such phones do so by putting them on a mid-range phone and releasing it after their flagship is already on the market. But again, Samsung was able to avoid the Galaxy S8+ from being a monster of a phone because of how they handled bezels.

While some would have thought this was a big risk for Samsung to take, it actually looks to have been a huge success for the company. Not only is Samsung seeing more pre-orders for the S8 and S8+ (which is impressive after the Galaxy Note 7 debacle) than they saw last year with the S7, but a report from Yuanta Securities Korea Co. states the S8+ will outsell the regular Galaxy S8. The company is expecting Samsung to sell 50.4 million units worldwide and that 53.9% (or 27.1 million units sold) of those units will be the Galaxy S8+.

Samsung has a long history of duplicating applications and services which are already offered by either AOSP or a proprietary service from Google. Some OEMs have chosen to embrace the fully-featured applications and services that Google offers (like we saw with the HTC 10), but then some OEMs like Samsung have chosen to be as independent from Google as possible. This actually results in a divisive debate within the community.

Some people feel this is filling up their internal storage with too many duplicated applications and services, while others enjoy it because they don’t like being tied down to Google’s ecosystem. We can’t really blame Samsung for doing this though because the more they rely on Google for these services then the more control they’re giving over (which sometimes results in less money they can potentially earn too). Samsung shut down their music service late last year (Samsung Milk Music), which is likely why they chose to go with Google Play Music this year.

So last week, Samsung announced they would be using Google Play Music as the default music player and the default music service on both the Galaxy S8 as well as the Galaxy S8+. Not only are the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ getting this treatment, but Samsung says it will happen on all Android-based Samsung phones and tablets launched in 2017.  However, there are some limitations and restrictions put in place depending on a couple of variables.

Samsung says this could change depending on which market you are located in, and which carrier you buy your device from. We’re also told that device support will be expanded on in the future too. These customers will have the ability to uploaded as many as 100,000 tracks to their own personal library (up from the regular 50,000). Lastly, those who purchase the Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+ or the Galaxy Tab S3 can activate a 3-month free trial of Google Play Music (which also includes access to YouTube Red).

Source: Samsung Newsroom

Early reports indicate that Samsung’s new flagship devices are off to a pretty great start, with the lineup breaking the previous pre-orders records set by the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge. However, not all things are bright and beautiful: the Galaxy S8 and S8+ have attracted a quite a bit of criticism for its red-tinted display on some units.

The issue of reddish display first came to know when the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ went on sale in South Korea, with many owners posting images of red-tinted display of their Galaxy S8 units on social media sites. It was believed the culprit had to do with Samsung’s attempt to strengthen red color on their OLED panels. Samsung reportedly developed deep red OLED displays for Galaxy S8 devices in order to avoid the issue of too much green due to the uneven distribution of subpixels in a pentile matrix. Initially, Samsung denied such issue was due to a hardware fault and advised users to adjust the color balance on their devices from within the display settings. But as more consumers raised their voices on the issue, Samsung announced on Thursday that a new software update would be rolled out next week to readjust the color balance on affected units.

Now according to a new report from the US-based review publication, Consumer Reports, the problem of the reddish display on the Galaxy S8 is not something that one should worry about.

To check the veracity of the reddish tint issue, Consumer Reports tested eight Galaxy S8 devices and found that out of eight devices, four Galaxy S8 had slightly reddish tint. The publication also notes that the issue is not immediately noticeable unless the user is comparing the two devices side-by-side.

“Our display evaluators noted that displays of four of our test models appeared slightly more red than the other four. It’s unclear how much consumers might object to the red tint, especially if they weren’t looking at two phones side-by-side.”

Additionally, Consumer Reports also said Samsung would release the software update as early as next week to address the color balance problem.

So while the issue is still there in some units, the good news is that it’s just a result of a software calibration problem, or at least it can reportedly be addressed through software, and should be fixed with the upcoming software update.

Source: BusinessKorea

What do you think? Is Samsung underplaying the significance of the displays’ red tint, or is it really not a real issue? Sound off in the comments!