In the June 7, 2004 special issue on technology, Newsweek asked Frog Design to design the Phone of the Future from scratch. & they came up with the petfrog.

Over a month, four professional tech designers produced the specifications for the "petfrog," a sleek, enticing prophecy of things to come. The phone's touch screen can display any interface, from keypad to keyboard to mouse pad or game console. Another higher-resolution screen can slide out of the unit for video chats and Web surfing. Thin, insertable cartridges can turn the phone into an MP3 player or camera, or add extra memory or a large keyboard.

Full article can be found here.

At that time, I dismissed the petfrog as the geek’s ultimate fantasy – it was too good to be true!

5 years on, we’re the Future… & ha! Except for the form factor, the petfrog is the modern smartphone.

Multimedia
Hard drives have been surpassed by the more reliable flash memory, allowing all smartphones to double up as music & video players and game consoles!

Productivity
Email, Office document & PDF viewers/editors & voice recognition – we already have that!

Contacts & Communication
Friendster is so passé – it’s all Facebook & Twitter now & IM (with video chat). I should add VOIP as well. :)

Features
High-res display? AMOLED
Cameras? Yep, up to 8MP. 
QWERTY keyboard? Yep, even on-screen ones!
Wirelesss? Wifi, Bluetooth, 3G, HSDPA, Wimax.
Expanded media? MicroSD
Location-based services? A-GPS, compass, street navigation!

What hasn’t changed…

Power. Electrical power.
Since the last 5 years, processing capacity has quadrupled, memory has decupled, network speed has increased substantially but battery life? It’s almost the same.

While I won’t say that battery technology has stagnated, it certainly hasn’t kept up with increasing demand for power. I haven’t come across any new technology that can replace the current li-ion/li-poly completely. So if there’s anything limiting your phone to replace your computer, curse the battery.

The Next-Gen Phone

… can have NFC, face & motion recognition like Project Natal, HD displays, installable OSes, pico projectors with virtual keyboards, well, anything you can imagine!
The point I wanted to make is that if you ever come across an article on some future technology, don’t shrug it off… You may well be using it tomorrow. ;)