The current generation Apple Watches are incredibly capable wearables. They can show you messages, emails, play music, receive calls and get notifications from your social media feeds. In fact, an Apple Watch is basically an extension of your iPhone on your wrist.
Recently, there was a report that mentioned Apple’s intention to include an LTE chip in the next generation Apple Watch 3. With access to the Internet, the Apple Watch can literally do most of the things a smartphone does, albeit in the confines of a smaller screen. One can go through emails, navigate through Google Maps and social media feeds at a quick glance while on-the-move. In short, it is the perfect device for helping you with the basics of the modern era.
This brings us to an important question — would an individual use the smartwatch as a primary device in the coming days? Would someone make the smartphone a secondary gadget, just like the way a tablet is used these days?
Prior to the original iPhone’s debut, most of us thought that a phone needed buttons to work properly. A button-based interface was considered necessary for every smartphone, whether it was oriented for hardcore business (like a Blackberry) or for casual gaming (like a Nokia N-gage). With touch-based interfaces, it became apparent that smartphones could sport bigger displays, which in turn could be utilised for displaying the World Wide Web in the way it was meant to be seen.
Over the course of time, smartphone interfaces got better and more efficient in their intention of showing content in the best of ways. When the Samsung unveiled plans to make a smartwatch a few years ago, the world was excited to see a device with the form factor of a wrist watch to house a computer underneath. Along with Samsung, Google and Apple also showed that making a wrist watch-sized device perform most of the smartphone functions is no big deal.
Both Android Wear and Apple WatchOS are extremely efficient in showing content. They still have issues though — no easier and practical way has been discovered to input text apart from the minuscule keyboard and the interface still needs some rework to display full social feeds. However, none of this is impossible. Present iterations of both the aforementioned smartwatch platforms have improved a lot, especially Android Wear with its 2.0 update.
The point is that the current smartwatches are already potent devices. All they would need is an innovative interface to raise its productivity to another level. With Internet connectivity, the smartwatch will be to perform all the necessary activities in an informative interface. With one of these, all you would need a smartphone will be a secondary gadget that displays your desired content on a comparatively bigger screen. You would no longer rely on a bulky metallic slab to check notifications every time you feel the need to.
In the future, smartwatches could house potent hardware to house foldable displays or even holographic displays to show more in a smaller form factor. All of these technological additions can make the smartwatch a device that will eventually make the smartphone irrelevant or rather obsolete.
