Modern smartphones in Traveller?

[Annatar Giftbringer]

Greetings,
I’ve been meaning to ask for some time, what would a modern smartphone looks like in Traveller terms? Is the digital assistant and voice control enough to count as intelligent interface, how strong is its computer ratingswise? Is a search engine like google advanced enough to count as an Agent program?

The mobile comms unit in-game has computer/0 at TL8, moving up to /1 at TL10 - along with ‘multiple forms of data’ whatever that means beyond audio and visual…?

So, is the TL8 comms unit a good analogue for a modern smartphone, with all its bells and whistles, or is it kore akin to the TL10 version, with builtin intelligent interface?

For that matter, just what is intelligent interface? Understanding voice control is easy to understand, but intelligently displaying data? As in not only switch program/app for different types of work, but actively rebuilding the UI on the fly? Or what? When I play music on my phone the interface changes into the Spotify app, when I surf the web I open the web browser, are those examples of intelligently displaying data, or what more is required?

 

[Condottiere]

We're moving on to folding configuration; I kinda expect holographic controls soon (and screen).

 

[Ursus Maior]

I think, by definition, we're currently TL7 bordering TL8 in certain fields of technology. Retrospectively, in 20-30 years, we might call the current generation of handheld communication devices as TL8 prototypes. Alternatively, we might see in 20 years that a lot of features then state-of-the-art was still missing in 2021. Traveller TL never were granular enough to look that much into details.