[Wowfunhappy]

Even without any particularly futuristic hardware, I'm of the belief that someone could design a smartwatch which does 80% of what I use a smartphone for. We primarily need better voice recognition (where better = basically flawless), and more power-efficient CPUs and radios.

A smartwatch can give directions, read and reply to messages, look up information, display schedules, and take pictures—all without taking my attention too far away from the real world. Anything longer I may as well do on a computer or tablet. I wouldn't be able to read the news or random forums, but the inability to do that 24/7 would be healthy IMO.

I don't forsee a future where smartwatches could replace smartphones for everyone, but I do think they could replace them for a lot of people, me included.

[mantap]

How would you get any privacy? I don't think other people on the train are going to be happy with me dictating "eggplant emoji smirk emoji" to a wearable.

[capableweb]

If your texts frequently contain a particular phrase, have aliases! Saying "purple sun" will actually dictate "eggplant emoji smirk emoji"

[saagarjha]

You can’t always dictate responses to your watch, and trying to respond with anything that doesn’t fit on the screen is really inconvenient.

[Wowfunhappy]

In my company's open office, I can whisper into my Pebble and it'll still pick it up†. On e.g. the subway there would be way too much background noise, but I can imagine a future where AI filters that out.

And, society can adapt. People used to talk on the phone in public constantly (and still do to a large extent, just less). This would be far less intrusive.

† For what it's worth, this is Google's AI. Rebble, the community-run service that lets Pebble's operate post-shutdown, chose Google for voice dictation, and as a result its more accurate now than it was originally.