Gadgetory

all right it's time for you and me to deposit into the bank of geek cred all right so every week favorite pastime is to talk about the most exciting tech that is right around the corner and first up is foldable screens and I know I know bendable flexible and foldable screens have been touted as the next best thing for seemingly forever and there's obviously been a ton of talk behind closed doors but now we have actually tried a working prototype from Lenovo and Samsung has also showed off its stretchable display technology earlier this year there have been many rumors in lake regarding samsung galaxy x foldable phone this year the latest reports suggest an announcement sometime in 2018 but after a number of dates changed company insiders no longer seem to know if this device is right around the corner or will continue to remain on the sidelines for another few years in truth we've already seen early flexible display ideas implemented than the likes of the LG G flex and the G flex 2 and Samsung's edge technology is based on similar underlying principles even if super bendy smartphones don't become a thing stronger more flexible and drop resistant displays are definitely going to be a big thing for clumsy smartphone owners like me now for those of you into completely bezel s displays under the screen fingerprint scanners are important now singer print scanners and physical home buttons are two of the first things that have to be sacrificed for more screen real estate but in and under the screen solutions are being developed when it comes to fingerprint scanners now many people were disappointed that the under the screen fingerprint scanner technology was not implemented in the galaxy s 8 and it's now of course on the back and not the great placement and it looks like if rumors are accurate that it won't be implemented in the Galaxy Note 8 either now next up is a new technology that doesn't get much airplay and that's zoom lens cameras dual camera technology hit mainstream last year with a number of flagship mid-tier and even budget oriented model supporting a variety of configurations while some dual camera setups aim to improve image quality and offer up new shooting modes the other trend we've seen dotted by a few manufacturers is their use of improved zoom functionality telephoto lenses have been available as third-party smartphone accessories for a while now but they're often a bit inconvenient to carry around with you both Apple and Oppo have shown that this technology can be packed down inside a smartphone with the iPhone 7 plus opal r11 and the one plus 5 all boasting 2 times zoom capabilities even if not all two time optical zoom however rumors have reported that Samsung may bring its own three time optical zoom to the Galaxy Note 8 kora photonics has repeatedly shown off its three time implementation and can also supposedly reach five time optical zoom now next up is something that I think is pretty cool and that's VPS indoor navigation now we all use GPS navigation for picking out driving routes and finding destinations but a similar technology could be useful for indoor navigation too at Google i/o 2017 the company unveiled its augmented reality VPS indoor navigation technology that will be enabled on tango equipped phones the idea is that large shops businesses or warehouses can provide layouts of various products or important indoor locations which tango users can then use to navigate to desired items for purchase or other indoor locations easily VPS uses a combination of computer vision machine learning and mapping coordinates to figure out the users location and route to their destination even in areas where GPS or data signal may be lacking know for those of you who watch me all the time know that I'm a little bearish on virtual reality but augmented reality that's a different thing looking again to Google's tango platform we can see a range of possibilities from sightseeing and education with Google expeditions through to clothes and virtual shopping mapping an entire room complete with textures in just seconds unfortunately this technology is still probably two or three years away from mainstream commercial viability but if these capabilities were mainstream already people would probably use these apps without a second thought you only have to look at pokemon go and snapchat filters to see that people love augmented reality and they're willing to use them all the time and there are almost endless commercial applications for augmented reality as opposed to a complete virtual reality now of course related to that is adaptive displays now if mented reality are really to take off then variable refresh displays which some manufacturers call adaptive displays is going to be key by thinking the GPU output to a displays refresh rate screen tearing issues that can appear when performance temporarily drops or is removed and a smoother more consistent looking framerate helps avoid nausea in VR even outside of virtual reality variable refresh displays can have a number of benefits for mobile high refresh rates can make animations look smoother and UI elements feel a tad more responsive as well as improving the fluidity of games and video at the same time reducing the display refresh rate when the UI is static can help save on battery life as pixels don't have to be updated as often so what are you looking forward to right around the corner and I know there's things you can get excited about that are 5 10 years down the road I know I do but I'm talking about stuff that's like 18 months just around the corner stuff that we will be able to use and talk about right here very soon let me know what you think in the comments below or on Twitter now if you are a developer or an aspiring developer code is your world you create it tweak it and lovingly obsess over it so picking the right repository management tool is super important that's why our sponsor at Atlassian created 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