Looks

The iPhone 4 is an incredibly beautiful piece of hardware, so let’s go with that. But I’d like the option for a metal backing like the one seen above. Or maybe it looks like one of these other examples (1, 2, 3, 4). You get the idea though: premium materials and elegant industrial design with a four inch retina display.

First off, the hardware will be scratch proof (not resistant…proof). And impact-proof. And water proof. Short of dropping it out of a speeding car or taking diamond-encrusted hammer to it, it’s going to remain flawless.

Goodbye Desktop Computer

Notice how in 10.7 iOS and OS X are starting to look and function similarly? Take that idea and push it a little further – but everything is housed in the phone. The phone doesn’t replace the desktop computer, the phone becomes the desktop computer.

Set your phone down on your desk at work. It pairs wirelessly to your monitor and displays Mac OS X. Pick up the phone to make a call, and you interact with iOS on the small screen. The phone displays whichever version of the OS is most appropriate based on the circumstances.

Pocketable Media Center

The same concept applies to playing media – instead of showing iOS or OS X, you have the Apple TV UI when dealing with your music and movies through a home entertainment system. Yes, three different UI/OSes in one device. It sounds like a lot, but as mentioned above I think they’re going to get closer and closer in appearance/experience so transitioning between them will be very fluid.

Use your phone to browse content from your phone, a connected network, your home computer or the Internet. Choose which screen you want it to display on and hit play. What if you’re at a friend’s house and you have no idea what their TV is called on the network (assuming they have multiple TVs)? Look at the TV through your phone’s camera and see the name of the TV scrolling across the screen – invisible to the naked eye. Select that one, hit play, and watch your content in all its 1080p streaming glory.

Car Integration

Similar to how chunky key fobs work, when your phone gets close to your car the driver door unlocks and the car can then be turned on. Since the car knows who is in it, settings will be adjusted accordingly.

For example, I want the seat back, but upright and depending on the temperature outside I want the heat/AC to kick on to keep it at about 68 degrees. Automatically start playing the last thing I was listening to on the phone. But if my wife drives my car, the entire car would adapt to the settings she’s predetermined and are stored in her phone.

This would be great for business travelers who rent cars a lot, or those who use services like Zipcar.

As the phone pairs to the car/nav/entertainment system, the phone interface changes similar to the simplified, big button interface of the Droid – perfect for driving. Although most of what you want to do would be voice controlled, ala Microsoft Sync.

Multiple surfaces in the car (in the arm rest, the space under the stereo, the glove box, etc.) become wireless charging stations. Just put your phone on top of it and you’ll begin charging – no cables running out of cigarette lighters needed.

Wallet/Banking

Your phone becomes your wallet. Using NFC/RFID your phone will have links to your debit and credit card accounts. Pick which one you want to pay with and swipe at the register. Done. An electronic receipt appears on your phone and is filed away for later reference. Each item is on the receipt is deducted from the appropriate area of your monthly budget.

PINs, biometric ID, passwords, etc. could be used to verify the transaction. All loyalty programs will be tied to your phone so you don’t have to pack your wallet with spine-curving cards.

Need to lend a friend five bucks? Lend the money by swiping one phone over another. This adds an IOU to a running list which can only be erased once both parties agree the money has been paid back.

Personal Cloud

It becomes your personal cloud – following you around. You blog is hosted there. Your Twitter account. Your Facebook account. Diaspora. Whatever. Don’t pay someone else for storage. Why pay for storage when you’re carrying around an ever-connected device with incredible bandwidth and speed?

(Gotta put a little more thinking into this concept – not 100% sold on it yet.)

Home Integration

Preheat the oven. Open the garage, turn on the lights, feed the fish. All that stuff.

Hardware Specs

The Guts – Processors, RAM, battery etc. capable of doing all of the above (streaming video to your TV, making a call, playing an iOS game, rendering Photoshop through the OS X interface, watching 1080p Netflix from a separate laptop tethered via MiFi) simultaneously and without any sluggishness. 1 terabyte SSD. Instant on.

Great phone – Of course, it would be an excellent phone: clear, loud speakers and noise-canceling mics.

Crazy accurate GPS –  It could enable an entirely new level of hyperlocal goodness.

Dedicated Fiber Optic Wireless Internet – I know it’s a contradiction in terms, but you know what I mean: more bandwidth and speed than you’re capable of using.

Camera – Front and rear-facing 12 mpx cameras with autofocus and optical zoom that actually takes good pictures. Great low-light capabilities. Instant-on. Takes stellar pictures as fast as you can click the button.

Video camera – Front and rear-facing cameras, 1080p with image stabilization and autofocus. Instant on – ready to record as soon as you hit the button.

Alarm clock – There would definitely be an alarm clock.

Microprojector – No external display? No problem. Creates an HD display on a surface up to 20 feet in front of you. Good for TV, presentations, demos, etc. See here.

Projected keyboard – If you don’t want to lug around a desktop keyboard to use for responding to long emails, extensive writing or document composition, using a laser it projects a full-sized keyboard onto the surface between you and the device.These have been prototyped, but none of them have worked too well. Of course, in my dream phone it would work perfectly.

Laser sound – Kiss the iconic white earbuds goodbye. Similarly to how lasers focus light, the phone focuses the sound directly to the person using it. Perfect if you want to watch a movie on the plane or listen to music at your desk. Headphones would be optional… and wireless.

One More Thing

Or it could be taken a completely different direction: what if it had minimal onboard storage and everything was simultaneously being uploaded to the cloud? You don’t need a terabyte of SSD on the phone if read/write speeds to the web are just as fast.

As you’re filming baby’s first steps 1080p, it’s being streamed to your central online storage. Select public or private and/or live – you instantly share your content and have it backed up redundantly – for anyone (or no one) to view. This could apply to all your files (notes, pictures, docs, music, audio recordings, etc.).

Maybe the best solution is to give you the massive onboard hard drive as well as the ability to choose if you want to instantly stream to a central location. And since this is my dream, we’re going with that.

Close to Reality

Picture yourself in 1995 (I was in high school – doesn’t feel all that long ago) and imagine someone describing an iPhone to you. At best you would have considered it a really cool idea, if you understood it/the implications of it at all…something you might see in a sci-fi movie. 12 years later it was reality – and available for $199.

I’m sure I’ll see my dream gadget in my lifetime. Three breakthroughs need to take place to make it a reality:

  1. Battery technology
  2. Wireless broadband speeds

The wireless display (phone to desktop) may be a ways off as well, but when Lightpeak comes to fruition (most likely early next year), you could plug in one cable to your phone and have it output to an external display while also syncing to an external hard drive.

What’s your dream gadget? What would you add/remove from mine?

Images thanks to people who are not me – click each image to be taken to the original source.