Tech world predictions

I will keep updating this post with any trend that seems closer and closer to becoming reality.

Let’s begin with…

• A scary global electronic ID. The other day I saw a Canon PowerShot billboard which said that newer PowerShot cameras will know who they’re taking a picture of and automatically apply tagging in the supported social medias, such as Facebook. For now it seems that you need to tell the camera ahead of time who is who. I wouldn’t be surprised if cameras start supporting applications which may use GPS coordinates/NFC tags to facilitate the recognition, much like Foursquare uses location as its main focus.
• Optical zoom will make a comeback in camera-phones like the Nokia N93i. It doesn’t necessarily need to be on phones with flip-out screens; users would have to put up with the angled display if the lens barrel is perpendicular to what it is on most phones.
• Lossless digital zoom during video-shooting on camera-phones (it may be already out on cameras). Large-pixel-count sensors offer plenty of flexibility with zoom: they can downscale the full sensor information to the recording resolution at zoom ratio of 1, and only use the center poriton of the sensor so it appears as we’ve zoomed in.
• Side indicator LEDs will make a comeback on cell phones, like the ones on Nokia 6300 or Siemens M55.
• Touch-screen-based phones will implement secondary touch surfaces, for example on the sides for scrolling. The chances of a side wheel like in old BlackBerries is very slim, but touch-sensors sound viable. There’s already an example of such redundancy, the Motorola EX130 utilizes a second little screen for notifications, so the user doesn’t have to wake up the main display and waste battery.