From 1992 to 2014, cell phones underwent an incredible transformation. Starting with Motorola’s 8900X-2, a boxy mobile phone that more resembled a home device than the handheld phones we know today, mobile phones became more compact and more powerful. In the last 25 years, we’ve seen everything from a flip phone, Nokia brick, and the Motorola Razr to a Blackberry, Samsung Galaxy, and iPhone.
So what’s in store next? We asked Midjourney AI to create images of what the future of phones could look like. We gave it a simple prompt: “What will phones look like in the year 2050?” It came up with twelve wildly different options.
Will any of these actually become our phones of the future? Could the images harbor ideas for what designers will come up with? Who’s to say, but they offer a lot to think about.
What is AI-generated art?
Creating art with artificial intelligence is a fairly new phenomenon. Similar to text-based systems like Chat-GPT, Midjourney AI relies on text-based prompts to create incredibly realistic images. The images are not supposed to be based on pre-existing images; however, there have been issues with some generators using artists’ work without attribution and copying their designs and styles.
For our project, WhistleOut used Midjourney, a program created by the research lab Midjourney, Inc. It generates images from language descriptions (a.k.a. prompts) similar to how Stable Diffusion and OpenAI’s DALL-E work.
- The program was officially released in March 2022 and has gone through various iterations since.
- Currently, it is only available through Discord bot commands.
Asking an AI art generator to guess what phones could look like in 2050 means we got some pretty out-there responses. The one above has at least nine different cameras on the back of the mobile phone. And while mobile phone designers have been increasing the number of cameras recently, they have not gone as far as Midjourney did with its prediction.
All to say, artificial intelligence is making an educated guess based on the progression of cell phone technology so far.
- Have mobile phones increased their cameras in recent years? Yes.
- Could AI predict that the number of cameras will increase by 2050? Probably.
Artificial intelligence-created text and images have risen in popularity since the release of Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, and Chat-GPT. These programs offer a free way for regular people to test out the software’s AI capabilities. The images and text can be shared and utilized across platforms with almost no restrictions.
As we noted above, the main problem with AI-generated art is that it is built on existing art. The program is trained using artists and artwork already available, and it inadvertently (or, maybe, knowingly) copies those styles when creating new images. Three artists have filed a lawsuit against Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt, claiming the AI tools infringe on the rights of artists without their consent.
The evolution of mobile phones
This year is the fiftieth anniversary of mobile phones. On April 3, 1973, Martin Cooper, an engineer at Motorola, stood on a New York City sidewalk and made the first public call on a cell phone. (The call was to Cooper’s main competitor in development from Bell Labs, and Cooper did not hesitate to rub the achievement in his competitor’s face.)
Cooper then developed the first commercially available handheld phone a decade later. The Motorola DynaTAC was released in September 1983. Now, forty years on, the possibilities are endless.
One image that Midjourney AI created looks to mimic the early Samsung phones, seen above.
- It’s bulky and has a keypad and microphone that stick out at an angle from the rest of the device.
- The bulkiness is immediately different from most other phones on the market which emphasizes compactness.
Meanwhile, another image seems to try to mimic the Nokia 1100—a popular mobile phone in the 1990s and 2000s. This mobile phone feels more like a Palm Pilot as well. It’s able to be held in the palm of your hand but offers no keyboard and only has a small screen.
The AI-generated images seem to be moving away from the low-width and big-screen smartphones of today and back to bulky keypad-based phones. That could be because people are moving from smartphones and back to the Nokias of yore… or it could just be the AI guessing.
Could mobile phones embrace AI?
Nowadays, Cooper isn’t surprised that everyone has a cell phone. He said in an interview with NPR, “We knew back in 1973 that someday, everybody would have a cell phone, and we're almost there.”
However, he noted that things like the internet and digital cameras didn’t exist back in 1973. “So there were breakthroughs that have happened that we just could not have imagined,” Cooper said.
Cooper is also predicting that AI will revolutionize how we communicate. “The cell phone is going to become a part of you. Parts of the cell phone will be embedded under your skin,” he told NPR. “There are so many improvements yet to be made in a cell phone. And I really do believe that we are just at the beginning of the cell phone revolution."
The designs in the AI-generated images mirror what companies like Apple have been doing recently to create sleek mobile phones that emphasize the quality of design—sometimes over utility. The AI images emphasize simplicity in the 2050 mobile phone designs.
Where do mobile phones go from here?
Midjourney AI generated a lot of image options for the future of mobile phones. One thing it generally agreed upon was the basic rectangular shape and a design that emphasized utility. Some of the phone options beg the question: Would you be able to tell the difference between this AI-generated phone and a brand-new Samsung Galaxy? While none of the phones noticeably mimic or rip off the design of popular mobile phone models, they bear a strong resemblance.
One of our personal favorite images from Midjourney is the phone above, where a futuristic mobile phone looks a lot like a classic Nintendo DS with its buttons and interface. It also feels a bit like the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 with its dual-screen design.
2050, here we come!
While 2050 is still more than a quarter-century away, there’s a lot that could happen to mobile phone design and consumer needs in the years to come. Will we still use cell phones in 27 years or will we, like Martin Cooper predicted, have cell phones embedded in us?
There’s a lot we don’t know, but the AI-generated images offer a glimpse into the future and the mobile phones we could be holding in our hands in a quarter-century.
Don’t want to wait until 2050 for a smartphone? Check out the latest tech-forward devices.
Moto G 5G (2026) 128GB
- 6.7 inch display
- Rear Cameras: 50MP, 2MP
- Front Camera: 32MP
Galaxy A37 5G 128GB
- 6.7 inch display
- Rear Cameras: 50MP, 8MP, 5MP
- Front Camera: 12MP
Pixel 10a 128GB
- 6.3 inch display
- Rear Cameras: 48MP, 13MP
- Front Camera: 13MP
iPhone 17e 256GB
- 6.1 inch display
- Rear Camera: 48MP
- Front Camera: 12MP
Methodology
We used Midjourney AI to create images of what future phones might look like using text-based prompts like, “What will phones look like in the year 2050?” Images included in this article are direct from the image generator with only minimal editing to add watermarks.
Alex Kerai
Consumer Trends Reporter
Find a better phone plan
Thousands of cell phone plans unpacked. All the facts. No surprises.
.png?w=280&h=280&usm=20&usmrad=0.8&fit=crop "Best Cell Phone Deals for June 2026: Get the New iPhone 17 for Free")
