Can the Phone Be Reinvented?

Just look at the array of phones being spat out by the tens of millions from production lines now. They're all the same. They're all flat glossy screens married to a flat wedge of invisible high-tech magic circuitry. There are sub-genus types, coming with keyboards, but those are looking increasingly jaded. And don't let's talk about "dumbphones," which are basically walking dinosaurs in an era where smartphone Foursquare check-ins can help redefine a neighborhood. Blame Apple, if you like. It boiled the form and function of a smartphone down to its almost ultimate essence...a screen and a barely there frame to hold that screen. You can't even open the case. Pretty much every phone maker has followed the iPhone format for smartphone design. But it's not just the physical format of the phone that has gotten boring and predictable. It's the software it runs, from Android to Bada to iOS to Windows.

How about a smartphone that, through some gestalt trick of the sum of all its interactive apps, actually engages with you, instead of merely delivering data in an endless stream on its glowing screen? Siri-meets-Watson-and-a-benevolent-HAL, if you like. It may be on the edge of the possible, but someone's got to be working on that technology. Stick it in a super-smartphone that looks like none of the current crop of clones, and we'd all actively give it even more personal information than we already jam into Facebook or Google's databanks because instead of demanding our active attention, and thus accidentally dominating our daily lives, it would actively benefit them.