Technologies are developing at a tremendous speed – if in 2010 3D printers capable of printing with metal and plastic, systems of payment for purchases with a face and total facial recognition seemed fantastic, then in 2019 they have already become the norm. High-tech, together with VK, is launching a special project about the most interesting technological innovations of the last decade. You can vote for the most interesting achievement here.
In the first version, the device was equipped with: 9.7-inch LED display with touch-backlight and a resolution of 1024 × 768, 16-64 GB of flash memory, Apple A4 processor with a clock speed of 1 GHz, Bluetooth 2.1 and a docking station connector.
The iPad revolutionized the world of mobile gadgets – it was the first device between a smartphone and a laptop. In the first 80 days, 3 million iPads were sold.
Following Apple, all the largest electronics manufacturers at that time took up the production of tablets: Samsung, BlackBerry, Microsoft and HP.
Google Translate speech translation
By early 2010, Apple smartphones were using an algorithm to continuously recognize and translate speech in real time. In January, a similar feature first appeared on smartphones of the rival Android operating system.
Symbian and Nexus One pioneered copying technology to more affordable devices – the devices have a translation and speech recognition function with a rich vocabulary in multiple languages, built on the basis of Google Translate.
The first electronic implant
In March 2010, Fiorino Menuetto, an engineer at Tufts University, introduced the first electronic implant, which collected data on blood concentrations of various types of biological markers, including insulin, in real time and reported the test results to the user.
The implant signaled a high insulin concentration using several dozen LEDs. Antibodies and enzymes located on the surface of a silicon microcircuit deposited on a silk film were responsible for the detection of biomarkers. The authors of the development noted that over time, the implant completely dissolves, which makes it possible to abandon the operation to remove it.
Implanted electronics may provide a clearer picture of what is going on inside the body to help control chronic disease or postoperative progress, but before Menuetto’s work, biocompatibility issues limited their use. The scientist managed to create a device that, during the tests, showed a record high biocompatibility at that time.
USB 3.0
At the beginning of the year, the international non-profit organization USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) introduced USB 3.0, the third version of the standard for connecting peripheral devices to a computer.
In the new version, the data transfer speed has increased 10 times – from 480 MPs for USB 2.0 to 5 Gaps. The update has significantly reduced the time it takes to transfer data while reducing power consumption. At the same time, the new standard retained compatibility with USB 2.0.
First cloud streaming service – OnLive
OnLive launched the first cloud streaming service – the project managed to create a video stream compression technology that made it possible to transmit it without significant delays to hundreds of thousands of users simultaneously.
While buffers allow time to resend any lost or delayed data before they are needed, they create latency that makes real-time operation impossible. In addition, the developed system constantly checked the quality of the network connection, increasing the video compression ratio and reducing the bandwidth requirements if necessary.
The same technology formed the basis of cloud computing solutions, which now allow playing video games with high system requirements or using programs for processing video and images even from weak computers – all calculations are performed in the cloud.
First solid-state battery
Today, lithium-ion batteries are used in the vast majority of electronic devices, in cars, ships, and even as a power source for aircraft. Science owes some of this to the startup Sakti3, which unveiled the first solid-state battery prototype for electric vehicles in 2011.
Engineers ditched coolants and auxiliary materials, which took up half the battery’s volume, and replaced them with more efficient materials. This made it possible to reduce the size of the battery by half and, as a result, significantly reduce its cost.
Coolants were used to prevent the battery from overheating and exploding: the engineers replaced them with a solid polymer material made from lithium metal. The solid-state battery, created by the company, proved to be stable – in the course of tests it withstood more than a thousand recharge cycles.