It's a wireless world now

22nd January 2018
It's a wireless world now

In 2018,  wires  will become increasingly passé
Bangalore, January 22, 2018: The time has come to cut that cord  and take off to a new wire-free world.  Many of our most personal technologies are  transiting from wired to wireless, making life, simpler and untangled.  Consider:
Almost all new speakers  in the market and most headphones,  now harness Bluetooth to untether themselves.  Your music source could be a player or a phone, up to 10 metres away.  The days have gone when you needed  to connect an  ethernet  cable to get Internet in a hotel room or a broadband connection  from the home router:  it's  all WiFi now.   You can download photos from recent DSLR cameras to a laptop or PC,  wirelessly . Even if you have an older camera, you can still do wireless transfers if you use wireless embedded  SDHC memory cards like Toshiba's FlashAir.  When you buy a new smart phone, chances are you also invest in a small wireless earpiece for hands-free listening, while on the move.  We use to classify people  seemingly talking to themselves while walking as barmy. Now everyone seems to be doing it.
Bluetooth and WiFi may be the most pervasive wireless technologies;  but there are others:  NFC or Near Field communication, allows you to  wave your phone at a Point of Sale  rather than  swiping a card to pay. Increasingly  hand phones will come with all three wireless technologies: WiFi, Bluetooth and NFC.
To that,  add another technology: Gigabit wireless -- wireless communications at 1 GB/sec or faster. Lattice Communications has been evangelizing  its SiBEAM  wireless technology at gigabit speeds  at very low power.  This may soon provide an alternative  to physical connectors like USB. It is based on the next generation of the WiFi standard -- 802.11ad  which is five times faster than the fastest WiFi today.  
More usefully it  uses  the 60 GHz spectrum which, worldwide,  is  unlicensed and free to use. Already Gigabit wireless has proved capable to  sharing  bandwidth-intensive   data like 4K ultra high definition video -- which opens up very exciting possibilities not just for wire-free home entertainment  but medical and surgical applications.  
Notebook PCs,  tablets, action cameras,  can all become thinner and lighter once physical  ports for connections are removed.  It's happening to phones too:  starting with the iPhone, many newer  handsets   have   altogether eliminated the  3.5 mm audio  port.  But  chances are, wireless chargers, will be the next big lurch that your phone makes  into the new wireless world.  (See Image of the day for Wireless charging options)