What role does electrical engineering play in the evolution of smart devices, and how do hardware and software innovate?

The evolution of smart devices is the result of a combination of various hardware technologies and software from electrical engineering, and together they are revolutionizing the user experience and driving change in the IT industry.

 

The importance of smart devices has increased dramatically in recent years. Smartphones, smart TVs, smartwatches, smart homes, and more – it’s hard to find a device in our daily lives that doesn’t have the word “smart” attached to it. Smartphones, first popularized by Apple, are now taking the world by storm, and electronics companies like Samsung and LG are working hard to develop new types of smart devices, such as smart TVs. The development of smart devices is more than just an innovation in electronics; it’s changing the way we live and the culture itself.
So what is a “smart device”? In the simplest terms, it’s a PCized electronic device. In fact, smart devices allow you to do almost everything you can do with a PC: send emails, surf the internet, create documents, play games, and more. Therefore, making a smart device requires the ability to build and assemble components (hardware) that are different from traditional devices, such as the CPU, RAM, and memory used in computers. The development of hardware technology that enables the complex functions of smart devices is a key component of modern electronics. Electrical engineering is at the core of this hardware creation.
What is electrical engineering? Simply put, it’s the study and application of phenomena related to electricity and magnetism. The history of electrical engineering began when Volta invented the Voltaic cell, the first dry cell, and Faraday and other scientists published papers on phenomena related to electricity. The development of electrical engineering was initially limited to the study of electrical phenomena, but it has since expanded into a variety of applications, including communications, power, control, and semiconductors. This expansion has played an important role in meeting the diverse technological needs of modern society.
Electrical engineering is divided into so many different fields that it’s hard to describe it clearly. Telecommunications studies electrical signals, such as radio waves, that make cell phones and the internet possible. The semiconductor field designs and manufactures semiconductors, which are the brains of computers, to make various types of memory and CPUs. The control field controls the input and output of various devices and systems, and the power field is responsible for the production and distribution of electricity to supply the electricity we use every day. The electrical field also creates circuits that control the flow of electric current. Each of these fields is essential to the development of modern electronics and ensures the reliability and performance of the devices we use every day.
And electrical engineering and computer science have a lot to do with each other. In fact, at my university, electrical engineering students and computer science students take the same classes in their freshman year in a department called the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. In their sophomore year, they switch departments, but there are many similarities in the courses they take. However, electrical engineering and computer engineering are two very different things. To explain the difference, computer science focuses on the software of computers, while electrical engineering focuses on the hardware of computers. Both disciplines complement each other as technology evolves and play an important role in creating new technological innovations.
Smart devices aren’t made of hardware alone To say that hardware alone makes a smart device is like making steamed buns with flour and no red beans. In addition to hardware, smart devices need software, the programs that run on them. Apple’s iPhone was a huge success around the world not just because it was the first smartphone. The first smartphone was IBM’s Simon, and Nokia and Microsoft developed smartphones before Apple. However, none of these smartphones were as successful as the iPhone. The reason for this was that they had a lot of features, but no operating system to match, and a clunky UI. In short, the “software” side of things was weak. However, when Apple introduced the iPhone with an operating system and UI optimized for smartphones, smartphones became a huge hit around the world, and the company has been praised for creating a new ecosystem by building an app store where developers can freely create and upload mobile phone applications and users can freely download applications of their choice. This system has greatly improved the user experience and maximized the convenience and efficiency of smartphone use. Software has become increasingly important in the IT industry, as evidenced by the recent acquisition of Motorola by Google, the software company behind the Google search engine and Android OS.
However, software does not exist in isolation without hardware. If you develop software that doesn’t fit the hardware environment, it will inevitably cause a lot of problems with the hardware and naturally alienate users. Therefore, to create good software, you need to understand the hardware. This interaction shows that advances in technology don’t just come from advances in one field or the other, but that hardware and software work together organically to create new innovations.
As a branch of electronics, there is a “computer science” field. Computer science studies things like the various programming languages such as C and C++ that are taught in computer science departments, as well as the algorithms and computer structures needed to design the basic structure of programs. In other words, computer science is a branch of electronics, but it studies the software side of things. As you can see, electronics is deeply studied and developed in both hardware and software, and it’s the combination of these different disciplines that makes the complex and sophisticated operation of modern smart devices possible.
While we’ve been focusing on the hardware side of electronics, there are many different fields that study both hardware and software in parallel. For example, electronics plays an important role in advanced technologies like artificial intelligence (AI). Not only does it provide the hardware basis for implementing AI algorithms, but it also develops software to make AI work efficiently. In this sense, electronics is one of the main fields of study for the future of the smart world. With the development of smart devices, the importance of electronics is increasing, and it will be the driving force behind the innovation and development of future technologies.