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The Future of Smartphones: 3 Trends you can’t miss – Selected

Always on the lookout for opportunities to help our ecosystem grow, we’ve been helping to highlight Huawei’s HMS App Up Innovation Contest, and had the opportunity to attend their annual Huawei Developer Conference 2020 earlier this month. The company presented a number of innovative and unique features of their upcoming smartphones, some that you might have missed.

According to the conference and our own research, there are 3 key points for mobile & app developers to be focused on in the upcoming years:

  • Secure Smartphones
  • Cross Device Smartphones
  • Human Factors Based UX Design

1. Secure Smartphones

With cyber attacks increasing each year, data protection is becoming a huge priority.  Using the highest device-end security level for user data is a must. One of the most heavily used technologies to secure e-wallets is Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). The Open Mobile Terminal Platform (OMTP) defines TEE as a set of hardware and software components that must meet one of two security levels (software only, and/or software and hardware attacks). The OMTP, which includes TEE standards, is hosted by our friends at the GMSA.

In a nutshell, using TEE standard technology combines all biometric data, payment data, key and lock screen passwords with a CC EAL5+ certification.

By providing cutting edge privacy and security capabilities, mobile phones can actually minimize the app permissions and tracking, provide better AI privacy protection, and increase sensitive permission usage of reminders.

Payment & Cybersecurity Events

2. Cross Device Smartphones

Nowadays multitasking is everything because we want things to be effective and efficient. Having more devices being able to “talk”  to each other would definitely make life easier. Because let’s be honest, when was the last time your phone and your tablet and your TV and your Sonos actually worked 100% flawlessly together?

Thus the emerging trend of cross device smartphone technology is already in process. Smartphones supporting 3 screens at a time – sounds nice, doesn’t it? A typical scenario might involve watching a video on a tablet, taking notes on a smartphone, and the ability to drag either content from one device to the other, or even a PC (with mouse and keyboard sharing ALSO enabled).

With such functionality, smart homes could be managed within one click, attending online classes and lectures would be simpler, and professional meetings could be more interactive.

Mobile Events

3. Human Factors Based UX design

Human factors-based UX design smartphones are something we will definitely be seeing more and more of in the future.

“… “perfect” is not a completed state but rather a process.” – Junwon Jung, Samsung UX Design Team

  • ART AOD – The “Always On Display” is evolving from static elements to user defined and infinitely customizable options. Building on existing “color catcher” technologies, users can use their camera to capture the scene around them, and integrated AI technologies will generate themes based on this color analysis.
  • Smart Multi-Windows – In addition to the cross device sharing mentioned above, users are being given more and more flexibility with how these windows should act/look like in any given set of user defined parameters. Ultimately these floating windows are bound to increase multitasking efficiency.
  • Notepad – with the help of this feature, users will be able to retrieve text directly from pictures and images, while turning photos into notes.
  • Image Privacy – as it has been already mentioned, security in smartphones these days comes first. Now, whenever transmitting any images, users can have ease of mind as they easily control all the confidential data they don’t want to share before sending their images.
  • 1080p HD Video Calls – users can make high quality video calls even in low-light conditions. Beauty mode, screen sharing and 360-degree background shifting makes it convenient and interactive for all users, anytime and anywhere.

UX Design Events

[Disclaimer: The Huawei Developer Conference was attended online by Startup Sesame Startup Scout Vivienne Tran. Startup Sesame, Sesamers, and all associated entities receive no compensation (financial or otherwise) from Huawei, and the opinions and information presented here may or may not represent those of Huawei.]

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Events 2 days ago

Last week, I spent three days at Bits and Pretzels in Munich — a startup-focused event with a distinctly Bavarian flavor. Think Oktoberfest meets startup conference, complete with dirndls, lederhosen, and more beer than you might expect. As someone building an AI-powered event platform, I went in with a specific mission: Observe how startups actually market themselves at events. Here’s what I discovered: GoodBytz: The power of good demos What they did: Robotics startup GoodBytz set up a booth where its robots prepared kaiserschmarrn (a traditional German dessert) all day long. Why it worked: Nothing beats seeing a product in action. While other booths had brochures and demos, GoodBytz’s robots were actually cooking. The smell, the movement and the end result stirred together an experience that people will remember and talk about. The lesson: If you have a physical product, show it in action. The old writing adage generalizes well: Show, don’t tell.  Let people see, hear and touch the product. WeRoad: The bathroom hack What they did: Posted “Missing Investor” flyers in bathroom stalls with QR codes pointing to their website. Why it worked: Pure genius. Every startup at the event was looking for investors, but the “Missing Investor” headline, while a bit on the nose, proved irresistible. Plus, bathroom stalls are one of the few places where people have 30 seconds to actually read something. The lesson: Think about where your target audience’s attention will remain undivided. Sometimes, the most effective marketing leverages the most unexpected places. Emqopter: Visual impact matters What they did: Designed a bright orange booth that displayed their drone prominently. Why it worked: In a sea of grey, white, beige and brown, Emqopter’s bright orange booth was impossible to overlook. The drone was real, too, and proved a real conversation starter. The lesson: Your booth is competing with hundreds of others. Make it visually distinctive and ensure your product is the hero. Quests: Community building using the product What they did: Created a busy, branded booth with accessories (toy car, traffic cones, a bulletin board) and used their anti-loneliness app to build communities among founders at the event. Why it worked: Quests used their product to solve a real problem right at the event, and the busy booth design generated energy and curiosity. The lesson: Use your product to solve a problem at the event — if it’s possible, of course. Demonstrate your value in real time. Dyno: Event-themed marketing What they did: Distributed branded electrolyte packs with the tagline “Your hangover ends. Your pension lasts – with Dyno.” Why it worked: Dyno aligned its messaging perfectly with the Oktoberfest theme. Every attendee was thinking about beer and hangovers, so Dyno’s goodies were quite relevant. The tagline was clever, memorable, and directly addressed a pain point most people at the event might have to deal with later. The lesson: Tailor your marketing to the event’s theme and culture. The more you tie your messaging and product to the context, the more memorable you become. So, what did I learn? Event marketing is about more than just showing up and setting up a booth; you have to understand your audience and create experiences that people will remember. Here’s what really struck me: most startups and even big companies don’t know how to leverage events properly. They book the booth, show up and hope for the best; maybe they bring some branded pens and a pop-up banner. Then they’ll go back home and wonder why they spent €5,000 in exchange for 50 business cards that never convert. The startups that stood out at Bits and Pretzels understand something fundamental: event ROI isn’t about booth size or location; it’s about strategy, creativity and planning. None of the startups above improvised on-site, or planned something the night before the event in their hotel rooms. They laid everything out 4-6 weeks before the event. A solid pre-event strategy is what separates successful event marketing from expensive booth rental.  But what matters most for early-stage startups is that you don’t need a massive budget to stand out. WeRoad’s bathroom stall hack probably cost €50 to print the flyers. A standard booth package at Bits and Pretzels would go for €3,000 to €5,500. The ROI difference is staggering when you compare the cost per meaningful conversation. That’s the difference between simply spending money and investing smartly. Building Sesamers has taught me that helping startups find the right events is only half the equation. The other half is helping them understand how to maximize ROI once they’re there. Good props aren’t a marketing expense; they’re opportunities to meet customers, investors and partners, and strike up engaging conversations.

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