10 Futuristic Smartphone Features That Will Appear Soon

10. Virtual Reality

In themselves, 4k smartphone displays are just another bit of ball-swinging by manufacturers. The human eye can barely make out a QHD (or 2K) resolution on smartphones, so what's the point of a 4k display apart from gloating that it's physically possible? The simple answer is Virtual Reality.

While VR headsets like Oculus Rift, Project Morpheus and Vive should be storming PCs and games consoles by the end of this year, not much attention has been paid to the technology on smartphones. But all the major manufacturers are already working on VR headsets that will utilise 4k smartphone displays, which are likely to start appearing later in 2016. Because the phone itself will act as the display in the headset, and be pressed right up against your eyeballs, a 4K resolution will be crucial to an immersive, non-pixellated experience. It's incredibly cool, in a dystopian sort of way.

If phones have a distancing, blinker-like effect on reality, then VR headsets will be full-on blindfolds, leaving us isolated in our own worlds of private pleasures. Huxley's Brave New World is just around the corner, but with smartphones instead of soma. Smartphones? More like Soma-rtphones...