China Eastern introduces phone check-in service to Shanghai

Ah but if you have only carry on . . .

Also, in the US and Hong Kong and Singapore - dumping your bags at a special only for online check-in counter is super easy, and its a lot shorter line than for the regular check-in.

And what about luggage? Virtual reality luggage that we can upload to the MU website and download at destination?

The queues at the counters are mostly due to travelers with all kinds of luggage to check-in. The manual boarding passes at the counter usually take also just a minute. Boarding pass and luggage handled by one person.

Electronic check-in reality in Europe also still involves the queue at the luggage counter, and, behold, you should not have a kilo too much, else you have another queue to master at the cashiers. It takes 2 persons to check one passenger in, one to explain the machine and one behind the luggage counter.

Zero time saving for the passenger, zero cost saving for the airline, IMHO.