Are smartphones dying? The arrival of the original iPhone in 2007 caused a revolution in the way we use computing power, transforming it from something that existed on a desk to something we have on hand all the time and use many, many times a day (and night).
Today, after almost a decade of intense change, the smartphone has reached its full potential. It is our constant digital companion, having merged the capabilities of a computer, camera, TV, sat-nav and more into one device on the road.
But a screen that's twice as bright glows less long than another, and smartphones have been glowing very brightly in recent years.
The novelty of smartphones is starting to wear off. There's almost nothing else to incorporate into a device, which means that adding a curved screen can be considered just art. Our smartphones are overloaded with clever features that most of us don't even know exist, and certainly have never used. In many countries the market is saturated.
The smartphone took ten years from its first version to complete.
And now what happens?
At one point it looked like wearables were going to be the next big technology. It turns out that it's very difficult to fit enough processing power and battery life into something like a smartwatch. So it probably can't become a viable alternative like a phone. Even if these two problems are overcome, the screen will never be big enough for us to adopt for our connection to the digital world.
This leaves augmented and virtual reality the main candidate.
Smartphones like Samsung's Samsung Galaxy S8 (and almost certainly the next iPhone) can already function as VR players when paired with the right device.
That in itself, while not a standalone use of VR, will give consumers an idea of what's to come.
So in the future (medium term), when the AR/VR concept becomes more popular, smartglasses will make a spectacular comeback. Although there is still resistance to the "glasshole" effect (many people wouldn't want to wear glasses, especially when someone is reading something in the flashlight instead of paying attention to a conversation) it looks like it could be the next evolution of personal technology.
Smartglasses will come as smart contact lenses or even the mind-reading technology that Facebook announced last week. Elon Musk, after all, has already talked about something similar.
Smartphones will not die completely naturally. Old technologies aren't dying, they're just finding a different priority in their place.
The closest device that has changed priority position is the PC: from rapid adoption we reached saturation level, and then to a stagnation for a long time, followed by a slow burst of innovation before we let it exist in the home.
In the next five to 10 years it will be the same with the smartphone.
But all these emerging future technologies, such as VR, and the idea of using mind-reading sensors, raise huge questions about privacy, the appropriate use of technology and its impact on society.
These questions have already arisen since the age of smart phones, such as whether we need to be able to be tracked at all times, or what it means for society and our relationships with others to spend so much time interacting through our phones. We have not yet solved these things.
However, with smartglasses or even mind-reading technology, which will make our relationship with technology even more intimate and easy to navigate, we will probably remember the complications of the smartphone era with nostalgia.