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Contactless Payments
In 2011 was the first time that people had been able to pay with their smartphones rather than their cards as Android Pay was released. This has led to apple pay and other advancements with contactless pay which is now widely used and accepted. This was not useful only during Covid-19 but it also has helped with security breaches with people's financial accounts. -
Self Driving Cars
In 2014, the first fully autonomous self driving car became available. This car was called the Navia, which Induct Technology created and was designed in order to help with guided tours. Even self driving cars like Tesla's are not fully autonomous. Having self driving cars lessens the chance for human error, which was accountable for 94% of car crashes. -
Apple Smartwatches
Apple released their first smart watch in 2015, which was announced first by Tim Cook. This made it so people could check messages or access their smartphone just from their watch, it also helped people track things such as their heart rate, calories burned, steps taken and more. This has also helped more advancements with tracking health and has even helped people track their sleep or other chronic issues. -
Oculus Rift
Palmer Luckey invented the Oculus Rift, which became the first commercially available virtual reality headset. This release sparked interest in both VR and AR, augmented reality, again which had led to more innovation being made a bigger market for VR. VR has also been used in fields such as the police force to assist in investigation or in the medical field when to learn and teach anatomy. -
Foldable Smartphone
The first commercially available foldable smartphone was release in 2018 by Royole, which was a Chinese startup company. This was actually released before Samsung's even though the idea has been floating around for years prior to the release. This invention has opened the door to having larger screens with more compatibility.