Your future phone will do the following, some of these features are available now, but your future phone is definitely going to perform all these features. What a gadget!

Video Chat

We’ve dreamed of two-way video conferencing ever since AT&T debuted its Picturephone at the 1964 World’s Fair (and probably long before). But video calling is a bandwidth hog–and that means real-time chatting remains a dream for U.S. cellphone users for now. The advent of WiMax, a speedy fourth-generation (4G) wireless technology, should change this in the next few years.

Phone As A Magic Wand

In the future, your phone may also be the device that ties together your other gadgets. Think of it as a remote control that can transfer files and activate or shut off other devices with a shake or swing of your arm.

Mobile Payments

Cellphone manufacturers like to say that your phone is the object aside from your wallet that you’re least likely to leave home without. So why not combine the two? In fact, carriers Mobilkom in Austria and NTT Docomo in Japan already allow users to make small purchases by swiping their cellphone across a sensor. The technology has yet to catch on in the U.S., but credit card companies including Visa and MasterCard are experimenting with similar phone-based payment systems.

Video Projectors

One constraint on the utility of phones has been their tiny screens. The solution of companies including 3M, Texas Instruments and Redmond, Wash.-based Microvision is to install projectors into handsets. Equipped with what these companies call “pico projectors,” cellphones can expand their displays to fill the nearest white wall or desktop. Microvision’s plans to sell pico projectors in 2009, while 3M may install them in Samsung phones as soon as late 2008.

Unfolding Screens

If projected screens seem too science fictional, the Dutch company Polymer Vision offers a product that hints at a more practical solution. The company’s Readius cellphone, announced last January, offers a flexible folding screen. Wrapped around its core, the gadget is no larger than a typical cellphone. Unfolded, the Readius sports a five-inch electronic ink screen. While that’s only slightly larger than an iPhone, it may foreshadow bigger foldable screens resembling a digital broadsheet newspaper.

Source : Forbes.com