Today’s mobile phones are elegant feats of engineering. Thin and light, built from space age materials and packing more number crunching power than most computers from 5 years ago. But within ten years, they’ll be garage-sale throwaways. Like the mobiles of yesteryear, we’ll be storing them in drawers for use in emergencies, or to give to our elderly family members whom we don’t like. All the while, we’ll be rocking the iPhone 26, a pair of contact lenses installed in the giant Avatars that live our life on one of Jupiter’s moons. Let’s look now, at what we may be using our smartphones for in this Utopian future:
10. Serving Tray for Sushi - Impress your hipster friends when you serve your non-GM organic sashimi on these ironic platters
9. Dominos – This will only real work with the iPhone 4, with its flat bottom, and the Samsung Altoid Galaxy Pro Explode, built on a stack of symmetrical kit-kat wafers (coming 2017). Everything else is just too smooth and rounded
8. Induction Stove – Simply crack your eggs on that smooth, Gorilla Glass screen, make a Skype call, and presto! The processor will heat up enough to be a part of this nutritional breakfast
7. Clay Pigeons – Traditional clay shooting targets won’t be able to stand up to the high-powered lasers we’ll be using for Velociraptor control. Motorola’s line of Kevlar-backed RAZR phones will finally provide a niche for the beleaguered American manufacturer, which Google will sell to Pizza Hut in a 2020 fire sale
6. Musical Instruments – In 2014 BlackBerry will try to offer a phone with a touchscreen, QWERTY keyboard, Sliding chassis, folding chassis and full functioning mouse. It will be called the BlackBerry WHATDOYOUWANT?!?, and will feature a picture of their 5th CEO in 2 years, tearing his hair out and wearing a barrel, embossed on its alligator-leather back. It won't be a good phone, but all those hinges and moving parts will create a lovely, tactile wood instrument
5. Frisbee – Apple will patent rectangles in 2016, forcing everyone else to "think outside the rectangle"
4. Mirrors – The iCu (I See You) app, released in 2014, sends electrical pulses several million times a second into the liquid crystal display, melting the indium metal inside until it seeps into the screen, turning your $900 smartphone into a pocket mirror. It makes the developer one of the world’s richest men
3. Protection – People will keep a smartphone, preloaded with a Bible app, close to their hearts in the event of an assassination attempt
2. To Make Phone Calls
1. Clock