U.S. Cellular launches entry-level Android

The ZTE Director from U.S. Cellular.

ZTE announced the release of its newest handset, the ZTE Director from U.S. Cellular. Available for only 1 cent after users sign a two-year agreement (or $99.99 without a contract), the phone is an entry-level device running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

The Director also sports a 3.5-inch HVGA touch screen, 512MB of RAM, and 4GB of onboard memory.It's powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm processor and a 1,500mAh battery that has a reported usage time of up to 6 hours.

On the back there is a 3-megapixel camera that's capable of video recording. Additional features include Bluetooth 3.0, an expandable microSD card slot, and a few preloaded apps such as Slacker Radio, Zappos retail store, and Amazon MP3.

The phone is available now at U.S. Cellular's online site.

MSRP:$199.99

touch-free input

Rise of gestures and touch-free input

Casting a sidelong glance to pause a video and bringing your finger to pursed lips might make you snigger, but gestures and other nontap inputs are on the rise.

For years, smartphones have included some sort of indirect input, like silencing sound when you flip the phone over, or dialing with your voice. Taken in a wider context, gestures and voice comprise a wider world of multimodal input -- basically, anything that isn't your finger tapping at buttons on the screen.

A lot of smartphones include some sort of optical or physical gesture to perform a set of tasks.

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

Gestures and voice may be starting the trend, but other, more sophisticated transitions and input methods will soon move from wacky option to normal ways of interacting with devices. For instance, calling up the Galaxy S4's S Voice Drive app already assumes you'll be speaking instructions rather than typing. On a drawing program, using your finger or a stylus may be the best way to go about.

What if launching a game automatically activated eye-tracking sensors for enhanced play, and what if tapping the phone to an NFC receiver on your car turned on motion control that let you mute or amplify volume on a phone call or the radio with a wave of your hand?

Then there will be the apps or tasks that will seamlessly switch from manual to voice to text to gesture-based inputs depending on what the app is and what you're doing. Let's say you launch a fitness app by tapping. When it senses motion, it switches to voice commands. At the end of the exercise when you're weak and uncoordinated, you could wave your hand above the screen to drill down into stats.

In Leap Motion's computer demo, the controller is you.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

What if, in order to authorize a payment, you've set up your phone to bump the device against a surface while simultaneously giving a voice command?

In addition to gestures we already know about, like bumping and waving, companies are hard at work adding tracing and body movement to the mix. There's Microsoft Kinect, of course, a gaming console that uses your moving body as the controller. In a more limited vein, Samsung has extended its software for recognizing a hovering stylus, to the human finger. On devices like the Galaxy S4, you can now point your finger right above the screen to preview a browser tab, photo, or video.

Leap Motion is another company working with gestures this way. The standalone sensor, imagined for use with a large screen monitor or TV, responds when you pinch your fingers for a zoom, point, draw, or trace. This is the kind of sensor that could easily find its way into a smartphone or tablet. (Click the link above to watch the YouTube video demo. The Leap box comes out next month.)

Sensitive sensors track the world in real time

Sensitive sensors track the world in real time

You may have never given two thoughts to the sensors that come on you smartphone. They don't mind. They're still there anyway, computing data on your phone's movement and speed, rotation, and lighting conditions.

These under-appreciated components -- the gyroscope, accelerometer, magnetometer, and so forth -- are starting to get more friends in the neighborhood. Samsung, for instance, slipped pressure, temperature, and humidity sniffers into the Galaxy S4.

They may not be the sexiest feature in your phone, but in the future, sensors like accelerometers will be able to collect and report much more detailed information.

Imagine an air quality sensor on a smartphone suggests David Harris, social change agent atInstitute for the Future in Palo Alto, Calif. Much like the Waze app crowdsources city maps and traffic conditions, sensors like the one Harris proposes could collect incredibly useful data about air quality around the world. That, in turn, could be used to monitor global climate change, or perhaps pollutants or allergens, through a network of smartphones.

Down the street at Ideo, Dave Blakely, the senior director of technology strategy, agrees. "The desire for the quantification of environmental factors is a big one," he said.

In addition to air quality, temperature and speed of movement are also biggies. Blakely also sees a future where electrical and health sensors built into the smartphone can track your pulse, or even double as an EKG, turning the everyday smartphone into a medical device.

'Appcessories'

An extension of the smartphone as medical device is what Ideo's Blakely terms "appcessories," a set of highly specialized peripheral software that fulfills very targeted needs, stuff that most people wouldn't want their everyday phone.

Let's say you've downloaded an art app that maps out a paint-by-numbers schematic of your favorite Picasso. Now let's say you've bought an after-market appcessory, a tiny pico projector with an NFC chip installed that, when you slip it onto the phone, beams out the image onto your surface so that you can get to work on your painting, or vegetable garden planting, or DIY home project.

Smartphone innovation: Where we're going next (Smartphones Unlocked)

Smartphone advancements are on the edge of transforming in some crazy ways, but it isn't like you think.
HTC's One lead the way with a TV-controlling IR blaster built into the power button.

The HTC One has a gorgeous chassis and a ton of camera tricks, the Samsung's Galaxy S4pauses and unpauses video when you avert your gaze, and in the Lumia 920, Nokia was the first to introduce wireless charging and an ultrasensitive screen you can control while wearing gloves.

Yet compared with the real meat of what you do with a phone -- things like communicating with people, browsing the Internet, snapping photos, and playing games -- today's top phones are mostly all on par. Software and hardware extras that extend beyond the basics, while impressive, convenient, likable, and even useful, still amount to fancy filler.

All of today's technology will certainly improve: cameras will get sharper and clearer, processors faster, screens stronger, and batteries longer-lived. But in tomorrow's tech world, that "filler" may be the more compelling story.

With his shaggy, sandy blond hair and a 5-o'clock shadow, Mark Rolston, the creative director for Frog Design, has studied technology for the better part of two decades. As he sees it, smartphones are just about out of evolutionary advances. Sure, form factors and materials might alter as manufacturers grasp for differentiating design, but in terms of innovative leaps, Rolston says, "we're at the end of gross innovation for smartphones."

That isn't to say smartphones are dead or obsolete. Just the contrary. As Rolston and other future thinkers who study the mobile space conclude, smartphones will become increasingly impactful in interacting with our surrounding world, but more as one smaller piece of a much large, interconnected puzzle abuzz with data transfer and information.

We'll certainly see more crazy camera software and NFC features everywhere, but there's much, much more to look forward to besides.