1549: xkcd Phone 3

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XKCD Phone 3

Title text: If you're not completely satisfied with the phone after 30 days, we will return you to your home at no cost.

Explanation

This is a follow up to 1363: xkcd Phone and 1465: xkcd Phone 2. It parodies common smartphone specs by attributing absurd or useless features.

Transcript

Ear screen

Heartbeat accelerator

MobilePay money clip

Siri, or whoever it was w put in here

Instead of being on surface only, screen goes all the way through

theknot.con partnership: Phone licensed to perform wedding cremonies ando does so at random

Fingerprint randomizer{USB E (hotswappable)

waterproof, but can drown

Foretold by profecy

Runs Natively

Wristband

Wireless discharging

Magnetic stripe

2 AA batteries (not included)

boneless

Introducing

The XKCD phone 3

we made another one

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Discussion

I assume that this is made, at least in part, in reference to the just-made OnePlus infodump and their upcoming OnePlus 2 smartphone. 162.158.2.188

Is the heartbeat accelerator used to fool fitness wristbands? Or apps? Or ... ? sirKitKat (talk) 07:56, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

"Ear screen" may refer to a different meaning of "screen" - a device that protects you from something, as in "sun screen". In this case, the "ear screen" would block the sound of the phone's speakers, making it useless (at least for telephony). 08:02, 10 July 2015 (UTC)~~ thepike

I thought it was a name change like those of beret guy, repurposing words to stay accurate without using the correct/standard term.Athang (talk) 09:54, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm puzzled by the "ear screen" explanation: On old wired telephone handsets, the speaker grille was sometimes referred to as an "earpiece screen" or "protective ear screen" in the user manuals, so I just assumed that it was a common feature being pointlessly touted as if it were exclusive (common practice on iOS & Android device packaging & promotional material). 108.162.221.95 19:53, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Doesn't running natively just mean that it runs apps natively instead of emulating them or something. Which would be a pointless marketing term OR it implys that the phone itself or the person inside runs.108.162.249.192 10:53, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

I did some re-writing on that point (because the likes of the Java Virtual Machine-type solution is a half-way house that needs mentioning, between 'native' and 'emulated'), but it's a bit long. Also I briefly mentioned the Crusoe chip essentially a 'hardware virtual machine layer' (over and above the machine-code to micro-code one that doesn't bear mentioning due to the ubiquity), but not sure I described it well enough. At the time, the talk was that a Crusoe chip could end up (by sofware flag or magic 'autodetection') run x86/Intel-compatible or Motorola (Apple) or DEC Alpha instruction sets (and probably any other sets they could squeeze in, whether CISC or RISC, like Acorn's ARM) without any software emulation at all. Of course, that was the time when programs didn't so heavily rely upon an OS's own API for pretty much all resources (at least on single-user machines), which is in effect an additional Virtual Machine layer, and the whole computing business has gone in a different direction, even Apple temporarily played with the PowerPC platform model.

...Yeah, that's no shorter than my in-article edit, is it? 141.101.98.252 13:44, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Wireless discharge: I think the explanation is too complicate. Every cellphone (and every other device that uses batteries) does discharge without a wire, it is just normal. The joke (in my eyes) is here that no-one would advice with that. --DaB. (talk) 11:43, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Here's an idea: a phone that discharges it's power wirelessly into another device.(unlikely that this is what it means though)108.162.249.166 12:39, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

• How about a phone that discharges it's battery into another human? I'd buy that (provided I could control when and whom.) 141.101.88.224 13:54, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
• knowing the previous xkcd phones: it isn't going to be controllable 108.162.249.166 11:41, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Could "Boneless" be a play on words against the jawbone devices?108.162.219.203 13:12, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

The second xkcd phone comic had the phone being "Ribbed"... Perhaps that's what "boneless" is talking about? 108.162.242.84 20:20, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Boneless might probably refer to Ivar the Boneless, a Viking leader who invaded Britain in 865 — an allusion to Harald Bluetooth, another Viking, king of Denmark and Norway. --141.101.64.113 20:52, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Does the title text seem to imply to anyone else that the customer may have been abducted for testing? Schiffy (Speak to me|What I've done) 17:13, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

A runaway pacemaker ("heartbeat accelerator") probably wouldn't cause a heart attack. A heart attack is the interruption of blood flow to the heart muscle. A runaway pacemaker could cause a lethal tachycardia -- 2,000 beats per minute is documented and hearts don't do well at that rate... Andrew (talk) 19:24, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Could "heatbeat accelerator" be a reference to an indicator light? Or am I the only one who gets a bit excited when I see my phone LED flashing indicating I have a friend out there who remembered I exist? 108.162.225.105 23:04, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

I completely agree with 108...105. When I first read the comic my first thought was that the heartbeat accelerator was the LED indicator light. I can recall getting quite nervous sometimes when waiting for a text back from my girlfriend, all that much amplified when something comes in. Robodoggy (talk) 01:32, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

The first xkcd phone comic also mentioned that the phone can drown. It said something like, "Don't submerge phone; it will drown."108.162.216.141 03:20, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

I have to protest the idea in the explanation that a screen "all the way through" would leave no space for the actual workings of the phone. I owned an original Nexus 7, which I took apart after the kids dropped it in the bath. All of the controlling circuitry was in a thin layer *around* the screen surface, not below it. Below it was mostly battery, and presuming it takes AA batteries it wouldn't have a giant LiIon. It's not an absurd notion at all that a phone could have nothing behind its screen. 108.162.216.59 11:30, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

I would actually like a phone running on 2AA (Or better, AAA) batteries. Not a smartphone, just a basic phone. I wouldn't want the other features though... -- 141.101.104.67 15:38, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

• Based on my experiences with wireless microphones, which I think probably consume batteries at a similar rate as dumbphones do (the reason I think this is because the main thing powered by the battery in both devices is the wireless transmitter), you'd get maaaaybe 5-6 hours of battery life from each pair of AA batteries. Less if they were AAA - for alkaline batteries, the smaller they are, the quicker they die.108.162.216.141 01:59, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
• I am struggling to say this without sounding mean, but... 141.101.104.67 must be someone over 50 years old? I never hear anyone younger desiring alkaline pile cell slots in modern devices unless they are older & miss the convenience of interchangeable batteries using standardized sizes. I think standardizing flat-pack dimensions for lithium-ion batteries could be of great benefit to the consumer & the environment in general. Far too many batteries & charger accessories become deprecated by external layout changes that are not required by the advancements made within the cells. Older folks remember being able to get a fresh battery just about anywhere. Even at the elevated price of high capacity rechargeable lithium cells, I think consumers would love being able to buy a fresh battery when theirs is low or failing. 108.162.221.95 19:53, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
• There is a standard for Li-ion batteries named 18650. Size comparison: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Liion-18650-AA-battery.jpg 108.162.246.191 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

"It would also make little sense for the OS itself to be non-native..." The first few versions of MacOS for PowerPC and PalmOS for ARM were largely emulated 68k code, with only the most performance-critical or central code ported. It was presumably faster to build a 68k emulator than to port everything. (And of course this meant that existing third-party drivers, extensions, etc. continued to work for a few years after the transition, but that could have been done separately--e.g., Mac OS X 10.4 on Intel could use some kinds of PowerPC drivers, even though the OS itself was purely Intel.) Also, the NT and OS/2 DOS environments, WOW and WOW64, OS X's early "Classic", etc. are all arguably emulated systems (you may be running x86 code natively on an x86, but the BIOS, memory mapped hardware, EMS, etc. are all emulated). 162.158.255.52 09:00, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

I believe that the reference to "Surface" refers to the "Microsoft Surface", touch sensitive hardware and software technology.199.27.129.155 23:02, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Aren't there lithium AAs? would -> should; thin -> fine; meat or fish -> flesh; boneless, -> boneless;; physical -> real; themselves -> whoself; their -> whose; physically -> ; will -> shall; described -> related; charging," -> charging",; thickness -> coarseness; him/her -> whom; something. -> something?; wire, -> wire;; it's -> its; protest -> contest; dumbphones -> doltphones; quicker -> sooner; folks -> folk; MacOS -> Mac OS; faster -> swifter -> shorter; purely -> sheerly; systems -> systems.; you -> You; ). -> .) Lysdexia (talk) 18:24, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

I saw the title text as "if you're not fully satisfied, I guess we shouldn't keep you prisoner anymore"