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Since they arrived in the mid-2000s, smartphones have revolutionized almost every aspect of our lives. From how we communicate and connect to how we find information and stay entertained, they are at the forefront of many of our daily activities.
While the original smartphones were revolutionary at the time, they have continued to evolve, offering new innovations that have made them better and easier to use. These innovations have made them even more pivotal to our daily lives and our ability to benefit from the convenience they offer.
If you’re up for a trip down memory lane, these are some of the top smartphone innovations from the last decade. Each has had a material impact on how we use smartphones and how they affect our lives.
Mobile Payments
The ability to make payments using your mobile phone is not as old as many believe. The technology was first released on the iPhone in 2014 with the launch of Apple Pay. Since then, many other smartphone manufacturers have launched similar products, such as Google Pay and Samsung Pay.
Smartphones can store and transmit payment card information using NFC (near-field communication) technology. This is done in an encrypted manner that uses tokenization and biometrics to authenticate payments and ensure the information’s security.
The adoption of mobile payments has led to wide adoption of digital wallets and contactless payments. As of 2024, estimates show that more than two billion smartphone users use mobile payments, which is expected to grow to more than 4.8 billion by 2025.
Wireless Charging
One of modern smartphones’ most significant issues is the need for larger batteries to support faster processors. The ability to quickly and easily charge a phone helps mitigate this, and the introduction of wireless charging drastically changed this.
Using electromagnetic induction or resonance, devices can charge by being placed on a wireless charging dock without the need to be plugged in. This technology, first tested in 2009 but only widely adopted by Samsung and Apple in 2015, has become commonplace in smartphones and remains a popular feature.
Alongside spurring the development of specialized charging pads, integrated charging docks in cars, and charging stands, the technology has also been adapted and evolved. This has led to more innovations, such as wireless fast charging and reverse charging, which allows one smartphone to wirelessly charge another.
Water Resistance
In 2016, smartphones began releasing with IP67/68 ratings. These ratings relate to a device’s ability to withstand being in water up to 1.5 meters deep for 30 minutes, making it less worrisome to use your phone around water. While this was first done in 2010, it only became common in 2016.
Aside from protecting against accidental trips into the swimming pool or drops into the bathtub, IP67/68 ratings also provide dust resistance. This helps repel dust from screens and keeps smartphones looking neater without excessive cleaning.
Additionally, smartphones’ ability to be submerged in water inspired users to try new uses for them. One of the most popular was through underwater photography.
Rear Cameras
The first cellphone with a camera was released in Japan in 1999. Since then, a rear camera has been a standard on almost all devices, including the very first smartphones. However, in 2014, rear cameras evolved significantly for the first time in nearly two decades by adding more lenses.
Pioneered by HTC, LG, and Huawei, smartphones began launching with dual camera arrays comprising different lenses that each completed a different function. These functions were initially split between optical zoom, ultra-wide, or depth-sensing lenses.
As multiple-camera smartphones have continued to evolve, quad-lens devices have become available. These have been paired with computational photography, which uses generative technology to enhance image quality and clarity and provide users with the perfect shot.
Bezel-Less and High Refresh-Rate Displays
Following the evolution of cameras, many smartphone makers began paying closer attention to the screens fitted to devices. In 2016, this came to a head with the release of bezel-less and high refresh-rate displays.
New bezel-less devices maximized the screen-to-body ratio by pushing the display to the very edge of the smartphone, allowing for larger displays. This led to the development of hole-punch and notch cameras and provided better viewing experiences.
Aside from larger screens, manufacturers also began offering screens with refresh rates between 120Hz and 144Hz, significantly more than the industry standard of 60Hz. These higher refresh rates made using the devices more enjoyable because, just like Hacksaw games are designed for maximum entertainment, they run more smoothly.
Foldable Displays
In 2019, Samsung and Huawei began working on competing devices that tapped into the nostalgic age before smartphones—an age where flip phones ruled supreme. The world’s first foldable smartphones were released using flexible OLED technology and ultra-thin glass.
These devices introduced new designs and uses for smartphones, particularly as vlogging instruments, offering continuous screens that can be folded in half to a smaller form factor. They also allowed the design of much larger devices that could easily be folded into a standard smartphone size when not requiring a bigger screen.
Although the early foldables suffered from design and durability flaws, further innovation in this technology has led to a number of developers adopting it and releasing their own foldable devices.
Under-Display Cameras
First appearing in the ZTE Axon 20 5G, under-display cameras offer a genuinely full display screen devoid of notches or punch-hole cameras. These tiny cameras, buried beneath a device’s screen, only become visible when in use and are otherwise undetectable.
While the technology drastically changed what the front display of smartphones could look like, it faces significant issues. The largest is ensuring that image quality is preserved when photographing through the screen.
Because of this, the technology is yet to be widely adopted by the largest smartphone manufacturers. However, constant innovation to improve these cameras’ visibility and performance means many phones may soon come without any visible front-facing camera.
