David Pescovitz: “Say you walk to the bus stop each morning. A context-aware phone would notice that at around the same time every day you move slowly and steadily for a while, stop completely, and then dramatically speed up. After noticing this pattern, you phone might ask you if you’d like to tie specific preferences to this particular activity. At that point, you could then set the device to ring while you’re walking but switch to silent once you board the bus.

The phone could also be programmed to respond to calls in different ways, depending on what its owner is doing. For instance, Schmandt explains, if a call comes when he’s riding the bus, he’d like the caller to receive a message to the effect of: ‘It’s not a good time for Chris to talk. Would you like to text message him instead?’ The agent would then ask the caller to stay on the line while the message is delivered. That way, Schmandt adds, he can decide whether to break routine and actually take the call.” —The Feature