According to Martin Cooper, inventor of the cell phone in 1973, the cell phone of the future will be integrated into the body of its user.
Now 94, Martin Cooper is best known for inventing the cell phone. Despite his advanced age, the man remains very close to Tech and the mobile industry. To this end, he was at Barcelona Mobile World Congress where he gave an interview to the Associated Press. The father of the mobile phone mainly talks about the many changes that have taken place in this sector, the current dangers in the field and how he sees the future of the mobile phone.
In 50 years, the mobile phone has changed a lot and will change again
When he invented the cell phone, Martin Cooper was an employee of Motorola. THE DynaTac 8000 weighed about 1 kg at the time. 50 years later, the man recognizes that many things have changed.
Of course, smartphones have since arrived, bringing the telephone into a new era that is constantly revolutionizing. Today the cell phones are more compact and embed various features that were impossible at the time of the first phone. However, he acknowledges that many problems have been caused by this constant evolution.
Martin Cooper recognizes in particular the big problem that is the data collection and the lack of respect shown to user privacy. The inventor also points to the addiction to smartphones and especially the access of minors to inappropriate content. But all this is nothing compared to what could be the phone of the future.
Asked about his conception of the future of mobile telephony, Martin Cooper thinks that the change could be radical in the near future. For him, smartphones could take a form “ distributed in the human body. Various sensors would be integrated into the body to play all the roles of a mobile phone. The body itself would become a kind of battery that powers everything.
“The human body is the charging station, isn’t it? You ingest food, you create energy. Why not have this receiver for your ear embedded under your skin, powered by your body?”
martin cooper
How do others see the smartphones of the future?
Of the push-button telephones in the early 2000s, we gradually moved to smart phones called smartphones. For a decade, each model of mobile phones put on the market comes with innovations. A few years ago, we moved on to foldable smartphones. Even if the latter are still to be perfected, some are already thinking of the smartphones of the future or what could replace them.
In the mobile sector, visions differ from one actor to another. To date, the one closest to Martin Cooper’s design is Elon Musk’s Neuralink. The latter is developing a chip that would be implanted in the human brain and would allow control a variety of things by thought. Nevertheless, the company is currently encountering many problems, in the same way as the Metavers, cited as the future of the web, but which is struggling to take off.
Before reaching the more futuristic vision of Elon Musk, several actors already think they hold what is the smartphone of the future: augmented reality connected glasses from Meta. These were also the stars of MWC2023. Various brands had come to present a sample of their product which should be launched in the coming months.
And you, how do you see the telephone of the future?