Samsung has just announced the release of its new smartwatch: the Gear S2. But, if you’re a college student, this might not mean much to you.

According to GlobalWebIndex, just 10% of people age 16-24 own a smartwatch. That might change in the near future.

Tractica, a market research firm, reports that shipments of wearable technologies are projected to reach 27.5 million in 2020. It’s currently at 166,000. I don’t know about you, but that spike is enough to convince to me to pay attention to a technology that’s about to be a part of daily life.

The lack of excitement around smartwatches is understandable given the current state of the young technology. Both the Apple Watch and Samsung’s first smartwatch, the S, received 3.5 stars or below in their respective reviews on CNET. Considering Apple’s lowest price on a watch is $349 and Samsung’s is $199, with a new phone plan as well, those are pretty poor reviews for a purely complementary device. But with the release of the S2, it’s clear the industry is already making progress toward a device that the public will want.

The improvements to the S2 start with the fact that it actually functions as a watch, meaning it shows the clock face at all times. It seems like that would be a basic requirement for a watch, but hey, this is a product in its infancy, and errors are to be expected. If Samsung and other watchmakers continue to be proactive about fixing flaws from their previous watches, the product will continue to be fine-tuned to the consumer’s demands.

According to an article from TechCrunch, the speed of the watch is pretty standard, as are its 4GB of memory. Although it does have an encouraging new feature: it’s called an e-SIM, which enables the watch to make calls and perform other functions.

I know what you’re thinking; you don’t want to hold your wrist to your head to talk on the phone with someone. Well, neither do I. But that feature is the start of something bigger: it could be the start of the end of the phone as we know it.

This has been an industry discussion for a while now. In an article written in 2013, a Forbes article was titled, “Here’s Why a Smartwatch May Eventually Replace Your Smartphone.” The crux of the writer’s argument is that technology is developing so rapidly that at some point, the watch will do everything the phone can do while being smaller and more convenient to use.

Granted, predicting the future is an act fairly devoid of certainty. Whether I, or anyone else, is right or wrong, it’s the future – who knows what’s going to happen.

But, if you look at where technology is headed, it’s not hard to see where the breadcrumbs lead. For example, while a niche product like Google Glass was a failure on a consumer level, The Wall Street Daily reports that Google Glass II is being re-designed to fit the workplace.

We could see a similar evolution for smartwatches, in serving a better purpose for professional use before developing into a tool consumers want to use on a daily basis. Technology takes time to perfect, but 25 years from now, it’s realistic to think that the majority of wrists in developed countries will be wrapped in a smartwatch.

If you don’t believe me just look at the state of phones 25 years ago. How many people could have predicted that the talking device attached to your wall would become disconnected, go in your pocket and allow you to access to the internet?

The phone of today is seemingly nothing like a phone from 1995. One can only imagine what a smartwatch will look like in 2040.

Paul Sarconi is a junior broadcast and digital journalism major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at pjsarcon@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @paulsarconi.

Published on September 8, 2015 at 6:38 pm