TELECOMS
“ CLOUD- BASED SMARTPHONES COULD OFFER CONSUMERS AN UNMATCHED USER EXPERIENCE AND MAY ONE DAY REPLACE THE PHYSICAL SMARTPHONE ALTOGETHER ”
DAMIAN HANSON CO-FOUNDER & DIRECTOR OF CIRCLELOOP
With the growing power of the cloud and ubiquitous 5G connectivity , the coming decade could see our devices truly step beyond the limitations of physical hardware .
Earlier this year , UK carrier Vodafone and Canonical — the company behind Ubuntu — unveiled a prototype for a new kind of smartphone . Combining virtual machines , cloud storage , and a low-latency 5G connection , the result is “ a smartphone running entirely on the cloud while leaving basic functionality on the device a user holds ”. By outsourcing the phone ’ s entire android operating system to a virtual machine in a nearby data centre , this cloudbased smartphone can effectively deliver infinitely scalable computing power through a handset with less on-board hardware than today ’ s most affordable devices and , supposedly “ provides the user with an environment that shows no difference to what they are regularly used to having ”.
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