Who needs cell towers when you have LTE Direct?

Picture this. You walk into the subway but you don’t lose service. Instead, your phone lights up with useful alerts—the train is delayed, a nearby kiosk is running a sale, your friend is standing on the other end of the platform. Meanwhile, there’s not a cell tower within 500 yards. This is the world powered by the future of smartphones: LTE Direct. For the past seven years, Qualcomm has been developing the next generation of wireless technology. As the name implies, LTE Direct is built on top of the LTE protocol that’s already helping your smartphone connect to a cell tower and transfer data at high speeds. LTE Direct doesn’t just talk to towers, though. Instead, it enables mobile devices to talk directly to each other, and at distances greater than 500 yards no less. This is much, much farther than what Wi-Fi and Bluetooth allow.