Contextual Awareness: What Is It, and How Is It Being Used?

Context-aware devices, such as the embedded smartphone keyboards, have been around for some time, though in a very limited form. By learning regularly used names, locations and phrases, they seem to know your next move, that is, predictive text. Similarly, but at a higher level, the next generation of smart audio devices will combine user-specific data, such as location, preferences and other device sensor data, including audio, to better serve the user.