Tech Trends You'll See in 2012

PC World - We're living in an exciting time in research: From consumer products just as phones and tablets to the way your home computer accesses the Internet, everything is changing, and by and large for the better. We predict that at once year the following ten developments will change the way you interact with the digital world.

In 2011, the Motorola Atrix and the Droid Bionic were the first commercially popular smartphones to sport dual-core processors. In the fall, Apple's iPhone 4S followed suit--and now it seems unlikely that any smartphones unveiled in 2012 will be competitive unless they can offer the same processing power that Apple's phones do.

As a result, you should expect to see a surge in dual-core mobile devices. ARM executive James Bruce, whose company licenses the designs of chips that find their way into nearly every mobile device in the world, said in a May interview that dual-core processors would be a huge part of making smartphones not just powerful nevertheless also battery-efficient.

"If you look at handsets today, we've seen dual-core handsets reduce power consumption," he says. For instance, if you're sending a text message, dual-cores have the potential to effectively streamline the lower-power functions of the phone through one core, during reserving the other core for more power-intensive functions, like gaming or navigation."

And don't expect chip development to stop at two cores. In December, Nvidia announced its first quad-core processor for tablets and smartphones, the Tegra 3.

Movie in 2 minutes at any airport or coffee shop

If you could download a movie in 2 minutes at any airport or coffee shop, or access hundreds of family photos from any network connection, how often would you use your laptop's optical drive? For most people, the answer is "not often."