Kendall Jackson

November 2nd 2017

Malcolm Campbell

UWRT 1104

Smartphones: The Age of Smarter Devices Love the title

How much faster will smartphones get? Good way to start- posing a question. Just in the

past five years, smartphones have advanced exponentially. If we look at the statistics, we

are able to double the number of transistors in a circuit explain approximately every 18

months. This means that after just a couple of years, devices increase speeds and

efficiencies by more than 200%. There is one limiting hardware feature however that

prevents our devices from being as efficient as they could be. Expand on this in a

different paragraph (the battery) This hardware feature is the battery. Batteries in general

have not improved drastically in the past ten years save the fast charging abilities on

select android devices. Battery life however has not improved hardly at all. While

scientists and researchers have new batteries in store, ready to be used in new devices,

theyre still too expensive to build so smartphone manufacturers have not utilized these

new technologies yet.

A new hardware feature will be introduced into the smartphone industry soon. A material

so strong, it would take an elephant balanced on a pencil to break through a sheet of

graphene the thickness of Saran Wrap. James Hone. This wonder material is graphene.

Graphene is the worlds strongest man-made material. Unlike any other material on small
scale, graphene boasts unimaginable strength. On large scale, this material is nearly 200

times stronger than structural steel. One may wonder however, how graphene could be

used in the smartphone industry. The answer is for many things. One of which is

graphene resistors and integrated circuits. Graphene is a very conductive material.

Similarly conductive to graphite or pencil lead. What distinguishes graphene from

graphite is the lattice structure of the atomstheyre arranged in a hexagonal orientation.

This structure is what gives graphene its unique strength. With graphene being

conductive and very structurally sound, this makes it a perfect candidate for integrated

circuits. Graphene will allow tech conglomerates to scale down the size of their circuit

boards because of how durable the material is; theyll need less of it for more durable

circuits.

Another smartphone hardware feature in desperate need of a remodel is the battery.

Batteries are probably the most primitive hardware feature in a smart phone. The

technology has been around since 1800 (year the first modern battery was created). While

the battery has seen many improvements, its time to be completely replaced with

something a lot better. Many companies are looking into graphene super capacitors to

replace their batteries. The advantage that capacitors have over batteries is their ability to

charge to maximum capacity in a minimal amount of timea matter of only a few

minutes. Capacitors are currently used for short-term power storage and have not been

used to replace batteries in the past, ever. For instance, if your computer battery dies, and

when you plug it in, it starts right back up where you left off, then this means the

capacitors in your computer have stored enough power to keep background processed up
and running while the monitor is off. As of now capacitors are used to store power for the

short term,

but researchers believe with graphene super capacitors, they will be able to achieve a

much higher shelf lifeseveral weeks.

Qualcomm, a leading smartphone processor company has recently tested a 5G

smartphone modem. 5G technology will allow its users to achieve unimaginable network

speeds of up to 5 gigabits/second. For reference, our current network, 4G LTE, boasts

speeds of only about 12 megabits per second. Networking speeds are not up to par with

CPU and GPU speeds. Once this technology is utilized, they will be. Luckily, this

technology may debut in smartphones as of next year.

Its truly amazing to see how far smartphones have come in the past 10 years.

Smartphones have not only become a lot smaller, thinner, and more compact, but they

have also become far faster and more powerful than ever before. Since major tech

conglomerates have been able to double the number of transistors on an integrated circuit

approximately every 18 months, Every year, smartphones become exponentially faster

than their previous generations. According to Android Authority, the Cortex-A72

processor, released in 2016, at only 16 nanometers in thickness is 3.5 times faster than

their Cortex-A15 processor released in 2014 at 28 nanometers in thickness. Electronics

are becoming smaller and more powerfulthis is proof!! Android Authority also

included a timeline of how Android processors have evolved. In 2008, The HTC Dream

launchedthe first ever smartphone to run the Android operating system. This phones

processor speeds were 582 Megahertz and the ram only had 192 megabytes of storage.

Compared to a 2015 flagship device, the Samsung Galaxy S6 released a device with a ten
core, Exynos 7420 at only 14 nanometers in thickness clocked at 1552 Megahertz!! Many

tech companies like Apple and

Samsung have opted to get rid of physical home buttons as well. Apple did this just last

year with the release of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. Samsung waited until this year to

accomplish the same feat. The Galaxy S8 got rid of the physical home button as well as

the two software buttons on either side of the home button on previous devices. The

home button is now integrated into the display of the phone with the finger print sensor

on the rear as opposed to having it on the front of the phone. Many smartphone

companies are also getting rid of headphone jacks so their devices can be thinner.

Samsung and many other companies however has opted to keep their headphone jacks in

their devices whereas this wouldnt really provide that much more space. The benefits of

headphone jacks far outweigh the liabilities. If companies got rid of them, someones pair

of very expensive headphones would become a white elephant. Apple however, who was

the first to get rid of the 3.5mm headphone jack, did release with its devices new earbuds

with a lightning connector. While this is useful, now iPhone users cannot charge their

phones and listen to music at the same time. This is an issue for people who are always

on their phones. This paragraph was very extensive. Perhaps divide the information

Smartphones not only can replace your home computer for certain tasks, but they

also replace cameras for amateurs photographers. Many photographers just use their

smartphone cameras now and can take photos with excellent detail and accurate color

reproduction. Another feature that smartphones are beginning to acquire is excellent

screen resolution. It is hard to find a smartphone nowadays that does not look better than
a flagship television. Companies are able to achieve pixel densities of up to four times the

resolution of 1080p on a device no larger than the size of your hand. Even 1080p or Full

HD on a smartphone is almost indistinguishable from 4K on a device of the same

size just because of how dense the pixels are on the screen. Screens dont have a whole

lot of room for improvement when it comes to detail considering we already have

smartphones with 4K displays. These screen will however become more power-efficient.

Haselton, Todd. Batteries that can charge smartphones in five minutes could

launch next year. Todd Haselton, CNBC, 12 May 2017.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/12/new-smartphones-may-charge-in-just-five-

minutes.html. Accessed 12 October 2017

Murali, Raghu. Graphene nanoelectronics: from materials to circuits. Raghu

Murali, New York: Springer, 2012.

http://uncc.worldcat.org/title/graphenenanoelectronics-from-materials-to-

circuits/oclc/780441663&referer=brief_results. Accessed 12 October 2017

Seifert, Dan. Qualcomm performs first 5G test on a mobile device, debuts 5G

reference design. https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/16/16479398/qualcomm-first-5g-

mobile-test-reference-design-snapdragon-636. Accessed 17 October 2017.

Triggs, Robert. How far were come: a look at smartphone performance over the

past 7 years. Robert Triggs, Android Authority, 31 July 2015.

https://www.androidauthority.com/smartphone-performance-inprovements-timeline-

626109/. Accessed 12 October 2017

 Very interesting paper; however, a tad disorganized. You could also add more

information to expand on the topic.