Rewiring: A Screenless Future

As technology has advanced, consumers' lives and daily interactions have increasingly revolved around personal hardware. In today’s world, it is increasingly difficult to navigate day-to-day life without technology in the way that previous generations did.

All businesses, careers, experiences, and even relationships are technologically-enabled or elevated by technology. Having personal computing devices like our phones in our pockets means we can access essentially all information in our day-to-day lives at any moment (as long as we have an internet connection). While this has become “the norm”, we do see a future where technology moves away from being user-directed, and instead we believe technology will become proactive for users.

Proactive adjustments are already prevalent across a wide range of consumer technology today. For example, Netflix automatically adjusts streaming quality when your internet bandwidth slows, smart home control suites turn on (or off) lights based on phone location, and many restaurant delivery apps recommend meals based on past orders, time of day, and even the weather. But these are limited in scope and tend not to be supported by integrations across applications. As the maxim goes, the future is already here - it is just not evenly distributed.

Another limitation we currently live with is that applications cannot be fully autonomous; they need our input and approval for certain actions. For example, while Amazon has an incredible recommendation engine for products you may need, in most cases (outside of Amazon’s Subscribe & Save feature), it still requires prompting you with notifications to make a purchase. These prompts, whether over text, email, or directly as app notifications, require users to physically take out their phone (or other device) to receive and act on this information.

In the U.S., about 153.5 million people are estimated to be using voice assistants, with Siri alone reaching 86.5 million users. When it comes to mobile voice search, about 1 in 4 users rely on it (Yaguara). When looking at demographics, there is a clear generational trend of increased adoption of voice search usage. For the age groups 18-34, 25-54, and 55+, adoption is 77%, 63%, and 30%, respectively. While voice is gaining traction with smart home devices (Amazon Alexa, Google Nest, etc)  and phone assistants (Google Gemini, Apple Siri), we live in a world where screens are the main way to access information.

What Could a Screenless Future Look Like

Phones today are access points of information and services, and this has become possible due to significant innovation in hardware. This has opened up opportunities for developers to build mobile-first applications worth tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars.

For example, from a storage perspective, phones have increased from 8GB (HDD) in 2005 to 100 GB+ on average and a max local storage capacity of more than 512 GB (in addition to cloud storage). With respect to CPUs, in 2005, notable devices were using single-core processors running 200 MHz to 1 GHz (a processor's clock speed which is the number of cycles per second at which it can execute instructions), while modern smartphones use 6-10 core processors running at 2-4 GHz, which means that in terms of processing frequency, today's smartphones can be up to 200 times more powerful. From a GPU perspective, early 2000s smartphones did not even have GPUs, only CPUs. Peak performance was <1 MFLOP (a measurement equal to one million floating point calculations performed by a computer in one second), and only supported 2D. Today’s phones have GPUs, like the Apple A18 chip, with peak performance of 1000+ GFLOPS, and can support features like ray tracing, advanced AI, and 4K gaming. Modern smartphone GPUs are at least a million times more powerful than the early mobile graphics hardware.‍

With the innovations around personal computing, the technological advancements, and clear everyday value provided, we do not envision a world where consumers abandon using smartphones in their daily lives.  Butwe do believe a radical change is underway, one in which the paradigm moves away from screens as the access point.

This does not mean there will not be value in the ecosystem smartphones have created, but how we interact with them will change. This will largely become possible due to innovations in hardware and software (including artificial intelligence, which will play a significant part), allowing these devices to pre-empt and/or complete tasks users would traditionally do manually. Our devices have learned a lot about consumer trends, but even more so, they have learned about us individually.

How Does This Work in Practice?

A screenless future could mean the phone is more of a computing or companion device. For example, instead of going into the Uber app, your phone knows when your meeting is over, how long it will take to get a ride and the commute time to your next location, and will simply request a ride for you. While reliance on phones is still prevalent, this allows consumers to be more present. You will not need to worry about checking your phone for the time, proactively calling for a ride, or feeling anxious that you may be late to your next meeting. Even if you are late, this is another area your phone can help, by proactively sharing your updated arrival time.

Before this future can become a reality, we will need to see meaningful innovations around new interaction layers and AI:

New Interaction Layers

Innovations and adoption around new interaction layers are needed because consumers still need information. Even if my phone calls an Uber for me, I still need to know it happened. These interaction layers could be smart glasses, other forms of augmented reality (AR), voice, haptics, and brain-computer interfaces (BCI) and potentially a combination of multiple depending on information input or output. This could simply be a quick notification through your glasses that an Uber has been called, and when it will arrive, with an update on how much time is left until the end of the meeting. Also, in certain cases, you may want to modify the task. For example, it could proactively show an option to cancel and reschedule your next appointment if you want to continue your current meeting. Eye-tracking technology as well as some input-based devices like smart watches, could allow you to quickly make a choice instead of needing to pull out your phone to go through the steps yourself.

This is challenging today because there has not been a form factor that consumers are interested in adopting. Most people do not want to carry around large AR headsets like the Apple Vision Pro or Meta Quest Pro, and they especially do not want to wear them in meetings.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

In the future, AI Agents will be personal assistants with access to different applications and can be given rules to follow. They could even communicate with other consumers’ agents to facilitate transactions or services on your behalf through frameworks like the Agent2Agent Protocol. Take the previous example of being proactive when you are in meetings, an agent can access your calendar, Uber app, and email, and will be constantly working in the background to make sure that you can focus on what you are doing at that moment.

Of course, for these services to work in concert, robust cross-app integrations will be required. Whether that is through traditional APIs or more complex but flexible agent interaction frameworks (like Agent2Agent Protocol, mentioned above) is to be determined. Orchestration layers will likely emerge from the large platform players that force standards on interactivity and managing user data. Apple and Google already provide crude forms of these through their system APIs (for example, Apple App Extensions or Android Intents).

Another essential part of AI is how you will interact with it regularly. This will likely be through voice because consumers must prompt agents to complete some tasks. Voice is a compelling way to interact with AI because it is fast, convenient, and allows for hands-free multitasking. It mirrors natural human communication, making interactions more intuitive and accessible to a wide range of users. Voice also enables real-time, dynamic conversations and can adapt to tone and context. It seamlessly fits into daily life across devices and situations. We have been discussing how AI can be proactive, but there are certain things that a user will want to tell their agent to complete. For example, you are walking to your next appointment and notice that the meeting space is crowded, so you initiate a conversation and tell your agent to find another meeting spot in a similar location and to email the other individual to update them. Voice technology is increasingly improving, and if we are to move away from screens as the interaction layer, voice will be a compelling new layer, allowing consumers to keep their phone in their pocket.

AI is gaining popularity fast, but there are still concerns around giving AI access to your information and allowing agents to make decisions on your behalf. Trust is still a significant hurdle and until consumers start to loosen the reins of control, AI will take some time before becoming a true companion.

Takeaway: Phones are here to stay, but the way we use them is evolving. We anticipate that phones will increasingly be valued as powerful computing devices, prized for their efficiency and capabilities. In the coming years, we will rely less on physically interacting with our phones, which could help us break the habit of spending hours staring at our screens, without losing the benefits these devices offer. Looking ahead, the combination of new interactivity layers with AI and our phones’ computing power will create a seamless connection between our physical and digital worlds. This shift will empower people to stay present and engaged in the moment, while still enjoying the convenience and value that mobile technology provides.