Are you ready to see what the future might hold for tablets?

Oct 25, 2014 08:30 GMT  ·  By

Users’ enthusiasm with tablets isn’t what it used to be a few years back. Surely tablets are evolving, adding thinner frames or better processors, but for some this progression happens way too slowly.

Let’s be honest, some of us are yearning to see real innovation in the tablet ecosystem, coming in the shape of something really mind-blowing. You might remember that, back at CES 2014, Fujitsu demoed a tablet bundling realistic haptic touch capabilities.

What this entails is that users shopping online for a piece of clothing would be able to feel the texture of the material the item was made from.

This is just one example of what the future of tablets might have in store for us, but the next story takes us somewhere else.

How about controlling your tablet from far away?

A group of engineers in Chicago, activating under the Knowles name, has developed a new microphone system that will allow owners of future mobile devices to operate them without actually touching them per se (as seen at Phys).

This microphone can “hear” the sound waves made by a tablet or a smartphone, which are inaudible to our less advanced human ears, and interpret them to understand their “meaning.”

Furthermore, the microphone can also use the same signals to triangulate hand locations and track movements, very much in the vein of how a radar might act.

The microscope is quite small and you can compare it to the tip of a pen to get an idea of its actual proportions.

The product that embeds the described microphone system is called “ultrasonic” and is expected to allow users to flip a slide on a presentation from a distance. It could also allow the transfer of information between two mobile devices that are 4 to 12 inches / 101 to 304 mm apart.

Nowadays, high-end devices like the iPhone 5s already have three microphones incorporated in them, but Knowles wants to incorporate a fourth one (the ultrasonic).

By 2016, we might see products bundling the ultrasonic

The company hopes to attract the attention of tech giants like Apple and Samsung, and if all goes well, by 2016 we should already see consumer products bundling the technology be out and about.

But ultrasonic already faces competition from device manufacturers that have added to their existing products sensors that track movement.

However, this technology hasn’t become extremely popular, mainly because it works from a small distance (about 2 inches / 50 mm) from the screen, which pretty much invalidates the whole idea. At that distance you might as well just touch the screen and be done with it.

But if the distance can be extended, you could be walking around a conference room, with your tablet resting on the table displaying a presentation, and while explaining you’d also be able to flip through the slides, regardless of your location in the room.

On top of that, ultrasonic uses sound waves, so the technology can be used in the dark too. It also doesn’t put much strain on the device’s cameras, power consumption-wise.