Smartphones will keep us company for many years to come, even as even smarter devices begin to spread. Nor is Motorola convinced that, on the occasion of the renewal of the Edge line, it illustrated its vision of the future, with specific reference to the new electronic devices that represent the gateway to the metaverse. Ruben CastanoMotorola’s customer experience manager explains:
The smartphone will always be at the center of everything. The smartphone is a personal device. It’s something you always carry with you […] more and more smart devices are available to consumers. But at the end of the day, the smartphone will always be a sort of central controller.
A QUESTION OF CONTENT
Of course, a company that focuses its business on the sale of smartphones cannot say that smartphones will disappear in the future, but beyond this trivial consideration it must be admitted that one of the reasons highlighted by Motorola is objectively founded.
Smart glasses and viewers are indeed tools to visit the metaverse, but if (at least part of) this virtual world can also be explored via smartphone, then the new devices are not perceived as indispensable. Accessing the metaverse with a VR viewer is objectively more engaging, but the substance does not actually change if you do it via the smartphone screen. The Motorola executive points out, speaking of the metaverse:
It is an extended reality in which there is a great variety. I believe that ordinary consumers will be able to access much of this metaverse, this digital overlay, directly from their smartphone.
Concrete examples of experiences in the metaverse that can already be used today via smartphones can be Minecraft, Fortnite and Roblox. These are significant examples if we start from a shared definition of metaverse: for example, a virtual space where users can work, play and socialize via avatars.
A QUESTION OF HARDWARE
On the one hand a mature and tested product, the smartphone, on the other devices that are objectively more demanding to use (think of the dimensions of a VR viewer or the need to connect the most sophisticated ones to the PC) or still not so mature as to guarantee autonomy and adequate performance while used on the move. Even this data suggests it is unlikely that smart viewers and glasses can give smartphones a push. Technological evolution can improve them, but it will take time.
MORE RIGHT TO TALK OF COEXISTENCE
More than a handover, Motorola talks about coexistence, synergies and interaction between smartphones and smart glasses / AR and VR viewerswith the latter to consider a type of product designed for Next Level exploration of the metaverse.
It is a category towards which Motorola and its parent company, Lenovo, are also looking with interest – think for example of the ThinkReality A3 headset, or the decision to support Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Spaces XR, a development platform for Augmented Reality. But these are projects that cannot currently have the same weight as those aimed at the production and sale of smartphones. Today, only the seeds of what is hoped to sprout in the future are being planted – and it is hoped that Meta’s proclamations about the importance of the metaverse will translate into something more concrete.
