Some of the world’s leading tech companies are betting big on very small innovations.
Last week, Samsung released its Galaxy Z Fold 7 which – when open – has a thickness of just 4.2mm, one of the slimmest folding phones ever to hit the market.
And Honor, a spin-off from Chinese smartphone company Huawei, will soon ship its latest foldable – the slimmest in the world. Its new Honor Magic V5 model is only 8.8mm thick when folded, and a mere 4.1mm when open.
Apple is also expected to release a foldable in the second half of next year, according to a note by analysts at JPMorgan published this week.
The race to miniaturise technology is speeding up, the ultimate prize being the next evolution in consumer devices.
Whether it be wearable devices, such as smartglasses, watches, rings or foldables – there is enormous market potential for any manufacturer that can make its products small enough.
Despite being thinner than its predecessor, Honor claims its Magic V5 also offers significant improvements to battery life, processing power, and camera capabilities.
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Hope Cao, a product expert at Honor told Sky News the progress was “due largely to our silicon carbon battery technology”. These batteries are a next-generation breakthrough that offers higher energy density compared to traditional lithium-ion batteries, and are becoming more common in consumer devices.
Honor also told Sky News it had used its own AI model “to precisely test and find the optimum design, which was both the slimmest, as well as, the most durable.”
However, research and development into miniaturisation goes well beyond just folding phones.
A company that’s been at the forefront of developing augmented reality (AR) glasses, Xreal, was one of the first to release a viable pair to the consumer market.
Xreal’s Ralph Jodice told Sky News “one of our biggest engineering challenges is shrinking powerful augmented reality technology into a form factor that looks and feels like everyday sunglasses”.
Xreal’s specs can display images on the lenses like something out of a sci-fi movie – allowing the wearer to connect most USB-C compatible devices such as phones, laptops and handheld consoles to an IMAX-sized screen anywhere they go.
Experts at The Metaverse Society suggest prices of these wearable devices could be lowered by shifting the burden of computing from the headset to a mobile phone or computer, whose battery and processor would power the glasses via a cable.
However, despite the daunting challenge, companies are doubling down on research and making leaps in the area.
Social media giant Meta is also vying for dominance in the miniature market.
Meta’s Ray-Ban sunglasses (to which they recently added an Oakley range), cannot project images on the lenses like the pair from Xreal – instead they can capture photos, footage and sound. When connected to a smartphone they can even use your phone’s 5G connection to ask Meta’s AI what you’re looking at, and ask how to save a particular type of houseplant for example.
Gareth Sutcliffe, a tech and media analyst at Enders Analysis, tells Sky News wearables “are a green field opportunity for Meta and Google” to capture a market of “hundreds of millions of users if these devices sell at similar rates to mobile phones”.
Li-Chen Miller, Meta’s vice president of product and wearables, recently said: “You’d be hard-pressed to find a more interesting engineering problem in the company than the one that’s at the intersection of these two dynamics, building glasses [with onboard technology] that people are comfortable wearing on their faces for extended periods of time … and willing to wear them around friends, family, and others nearby.”
Mr Sutcliffe points out that “Meta’s R&D spend on wearables looks extraordinary in the context of limited sales now, but should the category explode in popularity, it will be seen as a great strategic bet.”
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s long-term aim is to combine the abilities of both Xreal and the Ray-Bans into a fully functioning pair of smartglasses, capable of capturing content, as well as display graphics onscreen.
However, despite recently showcasing a prototype model, the company was at pains to point out that it was still far from ready for the consumer market.
This race is a marathon not a sprint – or as Sutcliffe tells Sky News “a decade-long slog” – but 17 years after the release of the first iPhone, people are beginning to wonder what will replace it – and it could well be a pair of glasses.
