Five Upcoming Future App Trends

The Battle of Sportsbooks Apps

Everyone knows by now that more and more states are legalizing sports betting meaning that there is a nuclear arms race between mobile sportsbooks to dominate the user landscape while the industry is still young. This frenzy to gain the most sign ups in regulated states has opened up a new front in the mobile app landscape to bring the biggest and best sportsbook apps to the users.

Betting in 2020 means having access to a sportsbook in your pocket. Driving across town to go to the sports betting hall or across the state to a casino sports betting cage simply won’t do anymore. It is even speculated that up to 90% of sports wagers will be made via mobile apps, making the race to create the best sports betting app experience very serious business.

Some of the best sports betting apps are adapting into niche focuses such as creating the best live betting functionality, or having a wide range of bettable options. Other sportsbook apps are going all in on ease of access and attempting to perfect the look and feel aspects. Whichever app comes out on top one thing is for certain, mobile betting is here to stay.

iPhone’s new LiDAR Scanner

When Apple unveiled their teaser photos of the iPhone 12 there was rampant speculation as to what exactly the black circle next to the camera lenses was. Now that some time has passed we know that it is actually a LiDAR system. So what does LiDAR stand for? Light Detections and Range, and isn’t a new technology. The Apollo moon missions installed a LiDAR system on the moon decades ago in order to monitor the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

So what does it do and why is it important? LiDAR is kind of like the eco location that bats use but uses light instead of sound. By pinging light waves at an object and measuring the light bouncing back creates an incredibly accurate rendering of what is in front of the sensor.

Future apps could use LiDAR sensors to create 3D renderings of objects that can then be used for uploading into AR or even being forwarded to a 3D printer. Lookout for apps in the future that use LiDAR to create realistic avatars of oneself or to scan and print objects in real time. Currently Apple is using its LiDAR in the iPhone 12 to enhance its cameras depth detection in order to take better photos by inserting artificial bokehs.

Apps that 5G will make possible

5G is the new high band radio technology being rolled out in select areas around the world. 5G has its detractors but the perks are obvious. High band radio waves (5G) may not have the building penetrative abilities or long range signal of lower band waves (4g), but when you are connected to it the speed is undeniable.

Self driving cars reliant on 5G? Sure. 5G is going to do a lot more for you than just enabling you to stream cat videos faster. There is a real possibility of cars being outfitted with 5G in order to communicate with one another to avoid collisions.

The speed of 5G is perfect for uploading and downloading large amounts of content so be on the lookout for large file share apps such as DropBox. Another possible perk will be extremely high grade augmented reality, which could utilize 5G connectivity in ways 4G never could provide.

AI Assistant Apps

Sure, there is nothing new about digital helpers like Siri, cortana and Alexa, and for the most part these assistants gain a little attention and then those of us who choose to enable them do so with everyone else forgetting about the feature. But what happens when your digital assistant is no longer just a talking search engine, but rather something that can talk with you and anticipate your needs?

Enter the next generation of AI assistants, and we’re closer than you might think. Powered by tech giants looking for simpler, faster, and cheaper ways to perform tasks and outperform competitors, high powered AI was destined to make it into our phones sooner or later. At the moment AI helpers are attached to the platforms they were designed to serve by, but with the increasing prevalence of these AI helpers it is only a matter of time until we see a comprehensive and competitive AI app available for download.

Enhanced Privacy Monitoring Apps

These days your “personal data” should probably just be called data going forward. Your personal data has been farmed and sold hundreds if not tens of thousands of times (no we’re not joking) back and forth to the highest bidden in attempts to create bespoke advertisements tailored to your personal preferences. Sure it is innocuous when it is just a recipe website but what happens when that ancestry test you took last year sold your DNA to the medical insurance industry and now your premiums are going up because of your rare blood type? This is the problem, queue the solution.

If the government isn’t going to step in to protect your personal information then personal data tracking apps just might. There are thousands of sites collecting user data but there are several main junctions where the data often is sold to and aggregated at. As soon as you start collecting everything in one place it tends to become vulnerable. This isn’t just convenient for the companies doing it but dangerous for you.

So how will these data collection apps work, look and feel? Your guess is as good as mine since at the moment we are purely in the realm of speculation, but it could be that a data monitoring app would subscribe to many different data collection points and then aggregate their own lists and notify you as soon as your name appears allowing you to submit some form of cease and desist email with the touch of a button.

Another form of data security could come in the form of an app that automatically scans a websites data collection consent form (you know those ones that make it time consuming for you to opt out of?) to locate and click “reject all” for you instantaneously. Either way it works out one thing is certain, when there is a problem there usually is a solution not far behind.