A.I. Could Make the Smartphone Passé. What Comes Next?

To consumers, this week will feel familiar: Apple is expected to unveil new iPhones with modest improvements, including a slightly thinner one. Yet many of the world’s biggest tech companies believe that a radical shift is underway, and that it could one day make the smartphone, as we know it, passé.

Modern artificially intelligent assistants, which are far more capable and flexible than clunky voice helpers like Siri, are poised to become the central operating system of all our personal computing devices, superseding smartphone software in importance, experts say.

Apps and their polished interfaces won’t matter much when A.I. assistants use devices on our behalf, automatically carrying out tasks like making plans with friends, generating shopping lists and taking notes in meetings. That would spare us the need to swipe through software menus and type on keyboards.

“The operating system that you’re used to working with on a phone and the apps that you launch — the way that you actually do things — will start to disappear in the background, where your assistant will actually start doing things for you,” said Alex Katouzian, an executive overseeing mobile products at Qualcomm, which has made chips for iPhones and Android devices.

And in the near future (not tomorrow), the smartphone hardware may even be succeeded — though not replaced — by a new all-important personal computing device. A pair of A.I.-powered glasses or a bracelet, for example, will be aware of your surroundings, and your assistant will essentially coexist with you to offer help throughout the day, some tech executives predict.

Every major tech company is thinking about this million-dollar question: What comes after the smartphone? Here is a list of predictions from current and former employees of some of the world’s largest tech companies, including Apple, Google, Samsung, Amazon and Meta.