Are Smartwatches the Future?

 Greetings, this is TheTechBoy with an article on Smartwatches. Are smartphones going away soon, and will smartwatches take their place?  Let us look at some data and surmise a logical assumption based on the data.  

 Smartphone Popularity 

    Smartphones (as we know them) became ubiquitous around 2012 or 2013. Before then, around the 1990s to about 2011 flip phones or internet connected flip phones were popular. For about fifteen years flip phones were popular and smartphones have only been popular for about eight or nine years. Even if smartphones cease to be popular after 15 years since their popularity in 2012, they will still be extant such as the flip phones and landlines before them. 

Smartphone Size

    The size of a smartphone has grown to a point where almost every smartphone is at least six inches. Smartphones under six inches have not been very successful; according to counterpointresearch.com, the iPhone 12 mini (5.4in) accounted for only five percent of iPhones launched in 2020. On the other hand, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, the iPhone 12 (6.1in) accounted for 27 percent of the iPhone's launched in 2020.  Smartwatches have screens around 1.4 inches and according to this data phones smaller than 5.8 inches do not fare very well. 

                         

    

Smartwatch Limitations 

A smartwatch that is 1.78 inches is about 300 percent smaller than a phone whose screen is 5.4 inches. One of Samsung's best-selling phones is the A51 5G. This phone has a 6.5-inch screen 128 GB of storage a 4,500 mAh battery and a decent camera. This phone sold well because, the price was good, the screen was large enough to watch videos, you could store plenty of apps on it, the battery lasted a day (or more) and the camera was good enough for social media. 

Try watching a video on this

The Apple Watch Series 6 (44mm) is the opposite of this phone: it has a 1.78-inch screen, and 303.8 mAh battery 32 GB of storage, and no camera. This watch is a great device to use alongside your phone but using it as a phone would be terrible. First of all, there is no web browser, and viewing anything with more than a few words on that screen would be miserable. Watching videos would be atrocious and you can not record videos or take pictures. Adding a larger screen and a decent camera would drain the puny battery, and adding a larger battery would cause the device to be bulky.

The Market/Innovation

The market is not ready for smartwatches as replacements for smartphones. Proof of this is a folding phone. Folding phones have been introduced making smartphone screens even larger and wider. Introducing a smartwatch that replaces a phone would have a very limited market. Also, the leader in smartwatches is Apple, but Apple does not really innovate much anymore. New features and designs are usually onto competing devices significantly earlier before Apple implements them. This data is shown in the table below. 

According to this data, Apple will not be making a watch that will replace your phone any time soon.

Holograms/Foldable Watches

What about Holograms? Holograms are not coming to watches for plenty of reasons. Holograms are expensive and are not private and would take up plenty of battery life. Holograms just are very expensive and navigating the user interface using gestures in the air would require complex sensors and cameras that would be a very expensive drain and would drain your battery. Also since a hologram would project into the air, people could see what you are doing. A hologram does not solve the problem of an excellent camera. However, some camera bands are available for smartwatches. A foldable smartwatch would be bulky and lopsided or light with a bad resolution. Also, a folding watch would drain the battery. 

In Conclusion:

    In my opinion, smartphones will not cease to be popular in less than ten years, and their replacement will probably not be smartwatches. This is not to say smartwatches that replace phones won't become popular. These watches can become popular if they use a large light design and its battery and holographic screen technology becomes more affordable and lighter. In the meantime bring on the foldable phones!!

Tech talk to you later!!