Tomorrow's world, today...

Always of interest at Congress are the weird and wonderful glimpses into the future offered up by operators and vendors alike. Top honours had to go to Japan's Docomo, which showcased its eye-controlled headphones throughout the week, aided by an unfaltering employee who seemingly blinked only when told (presumably, thus avoiding skipping tracks...). The operator stated its focus was on making the future of handheld devices that much more personal, utilising levels of interaction more natural to the day-to-day routine. Naturally, there was no word on availability or pricing, but the technology could well see future adoption in a wide range of hands-free activities, including in-car navigation.

Texas Instruments was also close by to unveil 'touchless gesturing' in partnership with XTR3D, a little-known Middle Eastern company. The duo presented a 3D human interface device, capable of real-time recognition of motion and gestures in the air surrounding a device. Pointing, scrolling and clicking were all demonstrated to control interfaces as well as play games and navigate maps. Expect this technology to take a little longer to catch on given the current requirement to fully train the software against each user's movements. Equally admired were the latest revisions to the company's range of Pico chipsets, which allow for projector technology to be included as an embedded chip in handsets and consumer electronics.

Qualcomm dazzled crowds with its advances in Mirasol; an interferometric modulation display technology which uses light interference to create colours on a paper-like surface without the need for any backlight, thus removing one of the biggest drains on phone battery life from the equation. The company expects retail devices with Mirasol to emerge by the end of the year; a milestone of significant importance to current devices utilising electronic-ink, such as Amazon's Kindle.

Finally, having seen a resurgence of late in cinemas, 3D content popped up all over the show floor, from 3D flat-screen TVs to embedded 3D graphics in the handset display (again from Docomo and Texas Instruments, respectively). Time will tell which of these fascinating innovations will become the Bluetooth of tomorrow, given the futuristic timescale of such investment roadmaps.

(This article is part of a series of follow-ups on Mobile World Congress 2010 from the GSMA Intelligence team.)