Tech That Will Change Your Life in 2022

A Facebook name change? A colossal global chip shortage? Digital art selling for millions? No crystal ball could have shown us what 2021 in tech would look like.

That’s part of the fun and excitement of this yearly exercise, where our team puts together predictions for what’s to come. Even with our best analysis of current trends, industry experts and Ouija boards, there’s no way to see it all coming.

What we can say confidently is that 2022 will be full of excitement for new technologies (see: mixed reality and home robots), continuing discussion of tech’s impact on our world (see: social media and sustainability) and plenty of curveballs because lately it feels like all curveballs.

Here’s our list:

EVs on the cheap

The days when people hunting for an electric vehicle had only a handful of choices are over. By the end of 2022, U.S. car buyers could have more than 100 different models to choose from. And many forthcoming models will be more affordable than what was available just a year or two ago.

EVs still make up less than 3% of passenger vehicles on U.S. roads, and research suggests price will be key to their wider adoption. (Another key is infrastructure. America has only a fraction of the public fast chargers experts say it will need.)

Globally, the average sticker price of EVs has declined 30% from 2015 to 2020, even as average range has increased 45%, says Scott Shepard, a principal research analyst at Guidehouse, a corporate consulting firm. He expects that trend to continue in 2022, with at least four more models of EV priced below $40,000 arriving in the U.S. market.

The Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck (with a starting MSRP of $39,974) may prove instructive. Ford had to close preorders for F-150 Lightnings after receiving nearly 200,000 of them; 75% are buyers who had never purchased a Ford before, according to the company’s latest earnings report.

Meanwhile, Nissan slashed the starting price of its venerable Leaf EV to $28,375 from $32,620, making it less expensive (after a $7,500 federal tax credit) than a comparable conventional 2022 Honda Civic hatchback. Many other models with starting prices under $40,000 from Chevrolet, Hyundai, Kia, Mazda, Mini and Volkswagen are either here already or will be soon.

Sustainable sustainability

Microsoft made a mouse with recovered ocean plastic. Apple’s latest iPhone and iPad models contain recycled materials. Amazon’s new Echo display, also made with recycled plastics, saves energy while idle. Every major tech keynote in 2021 featured a pro-climate component, and there will be much more to come in 2022.

The sector has arguably a larger carbon footprint than the aviation industry, and tech companies are working to reverse course with sustainability efforts that now include the design of our phones, tablets and computers.

Sustainability also means holding on to the same devices longer. “The real problem is that the industry develops products with very short life time, that are hard to repair and that go to landfills,” said Magali Delmas, professor of management at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Device makers are attempting to address that, too. Apple is launching a self-service repair program in early 2022 to allow customers and independent technicians to repair devices using genuine Apple parts, a move Right to Repair advocates long lobbied for. And Dell recently showed off Luna, a concept laptop with fewer screws and no fan for maximum repairability.

Kidproofing social media

In 2021, the world got the idea that social-media apps—especially Instagram and TikTok—haven’t been doing enough to protect younger users from seeing harmful content and getting sucked in by addictive features. In 2022, we’ll see more efforts to protect children, by lawmakers and by the social-media companies themselves.

For the early part of the new year, Instagram has promised to roll out alternatives to its main algorithmically driven feed, where users currently have little control over what they see. Instagram head Adam Mosseri also told a Senate subcommittee in December that the company would release more parental controls for teens in 2022, starting in March with a feature that allows parents to set time limits.

TikTok said it has begun to make changes to its algorithm so people don’t end up with feeds dominated by videos about eating disorders, depression and other possibly harmful topics. A company spokeswoman said it would continue to limit features by age and provide tools for parents.

Unconvinced that the companies will make the changes needed on their own, however, lawmakers are working on new bipartisan legislation. Sens. Ed Markey (D., Mass.) and Bill Cassidy (R., La.) have reintroduced the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act, or Coppa 2.0, which would extend current privacy protections to users 13 to 15 years old, ban personalized advertising to kids entirely, and more. Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) and Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) are working on legislation to require more transparency into social-media algorithms.

Chips ahoy

Beginning in early 2020, global lockdowns led to a surge in demand for the things microchips go into—smartphones for staying connected, laptops and PCs for working and studying from home, automobiles in lieu of public transit.

That led to record demand for chips in 2020 and throughout the first half of 2021. There are signs that demand has begun to soften. Third-quarter sales of smartphones in China, the world’s biggest market for them, declined 9% compared with a year before. (Apple, however, said it continues to see strong demand for iPhones and predicts a record profit for 2021.)

No one is sure when the supply of chips will be able to satisfy demand fully, and some analysts say it might not happen until 2023, when a great deal more chip-manufacturing capacity will come online, from Arizona to Beijing. But between the world finally having enough gadgets for now and chip makers running their fabs all-out for the past 18 months, the end may be in sight.

Back in the year 2000, chip-plant operators projected demand would stay strong and growth would continue at a torrid pace, said Stephen Howe, SDI Fabsurplus, a dealer of used chip-manufacturing equipment. “Lo and behold, in June 2000, the whole market just dropped off a cliff, and I’m pretty sure that same thing is going to happen again,” he added.

Home is where the bot is

Not coming in 2022: The all-helpful home robot who will take care of the kids, do the dishes and unclog the toilet. Coming in 2022: Home robots that can do more than your stationary smart speaker or roving vac—and might even keep us company.

Astro, Amazon’s Alexa-integrated household robot, uses sensors to roam around your home. It can do all the typical Alexa things (play music, answer questions, etc.) but it also uses its cameras to monitor your home when you aren’t there. If the robot is in the home of an aging relative, you can use a feature called “Alexa Together” to check in remotely.

David Limp, senior vice president of devices and services at Amazon, said Astro represents a shift to “ambient intelligence,” where our computers fade to the background and let us “interact in the real world and not have your head in a phone.”

Amazon began shipping the $1,000 Astro to a small group of invite-only testers in December. Mr. Limp said the number of people requesting invites is many times above his expectations, and the company is working on increasing inventory for 2022.

Similar devices such as ElliQ are already being tested with people 65 or older and living alone. Next year, the company plans to expand availability and add concierge services, which will allow users to order groceries and more.

Mixed reality = our reality

Look, we get it, some of us have been saying virtual reality is going to change your life for half a decade now. But we promise you 2022 will bring significant technological progress to VR and better augmented-reality experiences, too. (Remember: VR transports you to a virtual world; AR overlays digital elements in your real world. Combined, they’re “mixed reality”—but we refuse to shorten that to MR.)

Meta (formerly Facebook) plans to release a headset more advanced and expensive than its current Quest 2. New sensors and improved optics in the device (code name Project Cambria) will make avatar-you more like real-you. You smile, your avatar smiles! Plus, the same device will be able to show your real physical space but with digital features dropped in—say, look at a giant virtual screen over your real desk. It’s all a part of the company’s goal to build the metaverse—a virtual world where we work, shop, hang out and more.

It won’t be a one-horse metaverse race. There are reports of a late 2022 release of an Apple mixed-reality headset. According to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo from TF International Securities, the headset will be powered by Apple’s own chips (like the ones found in its MacBooks) and have both VR and AR features. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.

Health sensors hop off our wrists

After a decade of slapping fitness trackers onto our wrists, the health sensors are starting to break free. The screenless Oura ring is packed with mini sensors for heart rate, blood oxygen and skin temperature. Whoop sells clothing, including bras and leggings, where its tracker can be strategically placed. The camera-less Google Nest Hub display uses radar to track sleepers. And mattresses from Sleep Number, Eight Sleep and others log sleep patterns too.

“It’s less about a new particular technology or sensor,” said Chris Becherer, chief product officer at Oura. Hardware makers are looking at more ways to simplify tracking, he added.

The next big health device might be your earbuds. Apple is studying the potential of AirPods to read body temperature and monitor posture, according to a Wall Street Journal report. People familiar with the plans told our colleague that the buds would take a wearer’s core temperature from inside the ear and lean on motion sensors to detect slouching. Apple is also working on iPhone features to help detect depression, the Journal reported.

Future screens are so bright

If you’ve noticed that the display on your phone or smartwatch is brighter and higher in contrast than the one on your laptop, TV or car dashboard, you’ve experienced one of the biggest evolutionary leaps in display technology in recent years.

Since the iPhone X, Apple’s top iPhones have used OLED, “organic light-emitting diode,” a technology that distinguishes itself from LCD (liquid crystal display) because the pixels illuminate themselves rather than requiring a separate light source. The benefit is thinner, even foldable, displays, and better contrast and power efficiency.

Samsung’s phones had OLED even earlier—the Korean electronics giant was among the technology’s pioneers. You might’ve seen a few OLED TVs, but they have been quite expensive. The technology is now becoming cheaper to manufacture. Laptops with OLED displays began to pop up in 2021, and more models will arrive in 2022. The same goes for tablets and TVs.

MicroLED is another advanced display technology, one that could someday scale up to be an affordable successor to OLED. Samsung has already built video walls using these tiny self-illuminating pixels, but the cost is astronomical. At the CES tech show in January, Vuzix plans to show off smart glasses with miniature MicroLED stereo displays for augmented reality in the workplace.

Password-free logins

Passwords are a mess. They can be guessed or stolen. So, to prevent hacks, we arm ourselves with password managers that generate unique, gibberish logins for each service. Many of us don’t even know our own passwords at this point! Thank goodness more services are moving away from them.

You can log in to WSJ.com, for example, by getting emailed a special link. Same with Slack and PayPal. Payment system Shopify and the reservation app Resy send codes to your phone number. Microsoft recently let users skip the password and instead opt for a code from the Microsoft Authenticator app, a security key or a verification code sent via phone or email.

One study, from identity-protection tech firm Transmit Security, found that consumers would be 44% more likely to sign up for a service if they could use biometrics and 35% more likely if a no-password option were available. “2022 will not mark the end of passwords, but we will see some watershed movements in that direction,” said Andrew Shikiar, executive director of the FIDO Alliance, which promotes the use of security key, facial recognition, fingerprint or voice-based passwords.

The speed we need

So long, 3G. Thanks for providing connectivity to older Kindles and Grandma’s flip phone. Next year, U.S. carriers are sunsetting their aging third-generation cellular networks to make more room for the superfast fifth generation, 5G. Yes, this means those 3G devices will soon be defunct.

The telecoms have plans to expand their networks in the coming year. T-Mobile said it would reach 50 million more Americans by year-end. And 5G isn’t just for phones. Carriers are using the network to provide home internet service where traditional landline providers have not. In September, T-Mobile expanded to cities in Florida and North Carolina, while Verizon added Fremont, Calif., and Niagara Falls, N.Y., to its 5G home coverage.

There’s a good chance our internet connections will get faster at home and on the move, though there are speed bumps. President Biden’s infrastructure bill, which includes $65 billion in funding for expanded broadband access in rural communities, passed in November, but the program includes a long application process for states. Plus, AT&T and Verizon recently hit a 5G rollout roadblock because of concerns from the Federal Aviation Administration about potential interference with cockpit-safety systems.

Crypto…but less cryptic

So you’ve been getting by, nodding along when people talk about cryptocurrency and NFTs, thinking all chatter about the decentralised web and blockchains will pass by like a cheetah on an e-bike. It won’t. Sorry. In fact, in 2022, you might even get in yourself as tools to buy, sell and send digital money and tokens appear in the apps, services and games you already use.

PayPal’s Venmo app and the Cash App from Block (formerly Square) now make it easy to buy cryptocurrency and send it to others. The Cash App recently added a simple way to give any U.S. user bitcoin using a debit card. More places you shop will also start to accept your favourite cryptocurrencies. Tesla now takes dogecoin for specific merchandise.

Will you join decentralised social-media sites like DeSo, which are powered by blockchain technology? Eh, probably not, but our current social-media apps may start to embrace this world. Instagram’s Mr. Mosseri said the platform is “actively exploring NFTs and how we can make them more accessible to a wider audience.”

Deliveries ex machina

Depending on where you live, there’s a chance a drone will drop you a delivery for the first time this year.

Flytrex, an Israeli startup operating three delivery stations in North Carolina, just received FAA approval to make deliveries in a roughly one-mile radius. The company said this will allow it to carry goods from a variety of retailers, including Walmart, to more than 10,000 households. Wing Aviation, owned by Google parent Alphabet Inc., is currently testing and expects to launch the first commercial drone-delivery service in a dense urban area—Dallas-Ft. Worth—in 2022, the company said in October.

Meanwhile, in the coming year, Cardinal Health will be using very different sorts of drones, small fixed-wing electric aeroplanes made by Zipline, to resupply pharmacies within 10 miles of one of its distribution centres in Kannapolis, N.C. Zipline said it is also doing home deliveries for Walmart in its hometown of Bentonville, Ark.

MANALAPAN, FLA.— The Deal-Closer. That’s what real-estate agent Jack Elkins jokingly calls the Hinckley picnic boat he docks on the Intracoastal Waterway in the Florida community of Manalapan.

From the road, many of Manalapan’s mansions are shrouded by plantings and foliage, but they are clearly visible from the water, Elkins explained. A boat ride is often the best way to show properties to the wealthy buyers now flocking to the tiny town.

On a recent afternoon, Elkins cruised down the Intracoastal in the The Deal-Closer, passing mansion after mansion, most with their own docks. “When I was a little kid, almost all of this was jungle,” said Elkins, 46, who spent much of his childhood in the area. “There were foxes and parrots and all these wild animals.”

Manalapan, a roughly 2.4-square-mile town with a population of about 400, is just south of glitzier Palm Beach.

While Manalapan has long drawn moneyed residents such as the singer Billy Joel, it has historically lacked the prestige—and price tags—of Palm Beach. That has changed dramatically over the past five years, however, thanks to a series of major home sales.

In 2022, for example, Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison paid $173 million for a historic Manalapan estate. And David MacNeil, the founder of the automotive-accessories manufacturer WeatherTech, has spent a combined $94 million over the past year on a pair of neighboring sites, with plans to build a megamansion there.

“People like Larry Ellison and David MacNeil, these individuals can afford to buy real estate anywhere in the world,” said local real-estate agent Nick Malinosky of Douglas Elliman . “Manalapan is not a second choice for them. It’s their first choice.”

On South Ocean Boulevard, Manalapan’s most affluent corridor, about 21 homes have traded for more than $20 million each since 2020. At least six have sold for $40 million or more, up from only one in that price range during the previous five years.

In 2021, eBay billionaire Jeffrey Skoll bought an ocean-to-Intracoastal estate for $89.93 million, while Joel’s longtime home sold last year for $42.6 million.

Now, however, it is unclear whether Manalapan’s hot streak can continue. Like luxury markets across the country, the town is contending with stock-market turmoil and the fallout from President Trump’s tariffs.

Like many Manalapan residents, local developer Stewart Satter, who is listing a yet-to-be-built spec home for $285 million, is a Trump supporter. During the 2024 election, Satter flew a giant Trump flag above the site.

But tariffs have “created a tremendous amount of uncertainty at the minimum, and that is not good for business,” Satter said. “It’s not good for real estate. People say, ‘Let’s wait. We’re not going to buy a house, we’re not going to build a house.’”

Hitting the big time

Elkins’ cuddly Native American Indian Dog, Bear, lounged on The Deal-Closer’s blue-and-white-striped seats as the boat zipped along the Intracoastal, passing glassy modern mansions and traditional Mediterranean estates.

To catch a glimpse of Ellison’s roughly 16-acre oceanfront estate, Elkins guided the Hinckley through the Boynton Inlet into the choppy Atlantic, where the sandy beach in front of Ellison’s property was visible.

Known as Gemini, the gargantuan mansion was once owned by the late publishing magnate William B. Ziff Jr., who brought in large plantings and trees from South America for the landscaping.

“When I was a little kid, barges were going by our house with these huge trees,” Elkins recalled.

Ellison has approved plans to add more homes to the estate. He also paid about $277 million last year for Manalapan’s Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa, home to the members-only La Coquille Club, and talk is rife about how Ellison might upgrade the property. Ellison didn’t respond to requests for comment.

It’s a strange feeling, Elkins said, to see Manalapan hit the big time.

Before Covid, the town was often confused with its namesake: Manalapan, N.J. Tiny compared with Palm Beach, Manalapan developed much more slowly than its famous neighbour. It lacks the commercial infrastructure of Palm Beach, and its low-density zoning has kept it largely free of major condos or resorts.

When Satter, the developer, bought four empty lots in Manalapan in 2005, parts of the town looked like “just a mess of woods,” said his wife, Susan Satter. “I said, ‘Is this really how we want to invest our money?’”

Over the next decade, her husband built spec homes on three of the lots and sold them for a significant profit. He kept one, building a mansion there for himself and his wife.

“I thought I’d discovered a really special place,” said Stewart, who tested products for Walmart before turning to spec-home development. “If I had known what was going to happen, obviously, in the rear view mirror, I would have bought the whole town.”

The buyers of Satter’s projects include Ron and Cindy McMackin, who paid roughly $39 million in 2020 for a roughly 15,500-square-foot waterfront house with six bedrooms, then expanded it.

The couple, founders of the mechanical subcontracting company Pan-Pacific Mechanical, had relocated from Hawaii to South Florida during COVID.

“We knew nothing about Manalapan when we moved here,” said Ron, 78. He and Cindy were in the process of moving into a Palm Beach property they owned when their real-estate agent, Lawrence Moens , called. The actor Sylvester Stallone was searching for a home amid the Covid-induced real-estate frenzy, and wanted to see their house.

Before they knew it, they had agreed to sell to the “Rocky” star for $35.375 million, 33% more than the $26.65 million they had paid two years earlier.

This left them without a house. It was slim pickings in Palm Beach, and with five children, they needed plenty of space. Moens suggested Manalapan. At the time, the less-flashy choice was surprising to some of their Palm Beach friends. “I did hear a couple of times from people after that, ‘Why would Lawrence take the McMackins to Manalapan?’” said Ron.

But the McMackins love that it is quieter than Palm Beach, with less traffic. The couple have Sunday dinners with their neighbours, and Cindy has a small group of girlfriends who call themselves the “Manalapan mafia.” The McMackins like it so much that they are building a new, larger home along the same stretch.

Food-service entrepreneur Bob Carlucci and his wife, Aileen Carlucci, paid $11.63 million in 2020 for a roughly 13,000-square-foot Manalapan mansion on the Intracoastal, with a small beach house on the ocean. They are happy to have “discovered Manalapan early, ” Bob said.

Many buyers are tearing down older homes to build new mansions, Malinosky said. Before COVID, Manalapan was seen as more of a vacation destination, so buyers weren’t as choosy. Now that many are seeking full-time homes, however, “they want to make sure that it has the spa, it’s got the 12-car garage, it’s got the fitness centre, it’s got the wellness centre.”

Another prized amenity is a tunnel that runs underneath Highway A1A. Portions of the town are on a barrier island, and some homes sit on the ocean, requiring residents to cross the busy road to reach their docks on the Intracoastal.

Other estates are on the Intracoastal but have small beachhouses on the ocean. A tunnel allows residents to easily go from one side to the other.

Construction of these tunnels has become a rare point of contention between residents. In January, one couple asked the town commission to stop their neighbors from digging under the highway during the tourist season, claiming it was causing traffic to back up.

Building on the coast comes with challenges. Florida building code now requires roofs, windows and doors in high-risk areas to withstand winds of up to 170 miles an hour, according to builder Robert Burrage, who is building MacNeil’s home and four others in Manalapan.

Satter said the property insurance on his personal residence in Manalapan doesn’t include coverage for hurricane damage because it was too expensive. In addition to the annual premium, which was about $150,000 a year, he would have faced a deductible on hurricane damage of about 10% of the assessed value of the house.

He isn’t concerned with rising sea-levels, however. “When I bought my first oceanfront lot, my late father-in-law said, ‘What the hell are you doing? Don’t you know about global warming?’” Satter said. “I sold it at a huge number [in 2016] and made a lot of money. It’s been sold again and again and again—and the water hasn’t done anything.”

Stock market slide

Manalapan’s proximity to Mar-a-Lago has added to its popularity since Trump’s election to a second term, Malinosky said. Many residents support Trump. In the McMackins’ home, a bedazzled MAGA purse hangs in Cindy’s closet and a photo book in the living room shows her attending a Trump event at Mar-a-Lago, where they are members.

But the trade war and stock-market volatility have injected uncertainty into the real-estate market.

Until recently, Hamptons home builder Joe Farrell was considering paying more than $30 million for a building site in Manalapan, he said. He has decided to hold off on any acquisitions for now, however, because of the tariffs and resulting stock-market fallout.

“The market seems to still be pretty good, but people are maybe a little more cautious about parting ways with liquidity,” Farrell said. “I want to see things stabilize before I commit to that kind of capital outlay.”

Elkins said one of his clients considered backing out of a $10 million deal over the last few weeks on Point Manalapan, but decided to move ahead to avoid forfeiting the deposit.

Malinosky said he still sees significant demand for big-ticket properties in Manalapan, especially since many wealthy people are taking money out of the stock market. He said he has closed more than $150 million in deals in the greater Palm Beach area over the past two weeks.

Even with the uncertainty, “there is no shortage of buyers that will spend $100 million right now in Manalapan,” he said.

Shelly Newman, an agent with the Corcoran Group, said she recently sold a piece of land to a spec-home developer for $25 million. And the McMackins are moving ahead with plans to complete their new house, though tariffs have been “the talk of the town,” Ron said.

“I do have a stock portfolio and it is down,” he said. “But I don’t let that affect what I’m doing. We’re very fortunate with resources.”

While Satter agrees with efforts to bring manufacturing back to the U.S., he said he has been blindsided by the extent of the trade war. “I’m not sure about how they’re rolling it out,” he said.

A handful of potential buyers have expressed interest in his $285 million listing, he said, but he realizes the prospective buyer pool is tiny. “There are going to be three or four people who ultimately show real interest and have the capacity to pull the trigger,” he said.

Ultimately, he said he isn’t too worried about the prospects for sale, since he can afford to sit on the property long-term.

Still, real-estate agents said Satter’s property and others may be priced too aggressively, even without tariffs.

British hedge-fund billionaire Chris Rokos is listing his 3-acre Manalapan estate for $150 million, more than triple what he paid for it in 2017. And real-estate investor Vivian Dimond recently cut the price of a Manalapan home by $14.5 million, to $64.5 million. It’s been on the market since September 2024.

For some Manalapan residents, home values are beside the point. Bob and Aileen Carlucci, for example, have no intention of moving.

“We look at each other and we say. ‘This is it,’” Bob said. “You can’t get anything better, we don’t believe—in this country, at least.”