What does mobile entertainment mean to you? The very first versions that we had – aside from traditional books – were individual computer games of the Space Invaders generation that could be played for an hour at a time before their batteries ran out. The arrival of smartphones changed the game, making it much more practical and acceptable to carry around games because they were attached to a useful tool and also opening the door to internet-based entertainment.
Today, our phones and other mobile devices offer numerous different fun ways to waste time – but how are they changing, and what can we expect in the future?
Games, games, games!
As the amount of computing power that can be crammed into a small device continues to increase and improvements in hardware give us better and better screens, we’re seeing games with much better resolution and more detail. 3D effects are improving and advances in lighting effects are making them look much more realistic. The single biggest change taking place, however, lies not in mobile devices themselves but in the games engines that are now becoming freely available to designers. This has led to a rise in the number and quality of indie games being produced, many of them free or very cheap, and this looks likely to continue, giving consumers a lot more choice.
Feeling lucky?
It’s fun to play games where winning gets you a real reward, but if you don’t want to risk losing all your money on gambling sites, then what are your options? FreeLotto is one of a great range of new games financed by advertising, which offer exciting prizes to winners, and you can play official FreeLotto daily or even set it up to play automatically so that when you forget to play, you still have a chance of getting a prize.
TV, movies and radio
You can now get most of your favorite streaming networks in a suitable format for watching on small mobile devices, and improved screen technology means that it’s much easier to enjoy movies and TV this way without missing the details. Audio has now advanced as far as human hearing can make use of it, but there is still increasing improvement in headsets to help you appreciate it fully in crowded places where you don’t want to bother other people. This is partly why radio and podcasts are making a comeback, and as mobile devices get better at processing multiple tasks simultaneously, you can enjoy them at the same time as playing games.
New technology
With micro projection technologies improving, there’s a serious possibility that the next generation of mobile devices will let you project the games you’re playing or the movies you’re watching onto a larger canvas. Flexible, roll-up screens are another option for letting you carry around a small device but enjoy a bigger view. Cloud-based gaming also looks set to develop in ways that will change the playing field, allowing much more interaction and giving you access to computing power outside your device itself.
Whatever else the future may hold, it looks set to bring us more fun.
