Talk:1363: xkcd Phone

I really dislike the tone of the explanation. I mean it's so negative about the features! Not that they are all useful, but isn't this a wiki and should be neutral? It takes also the fun out of it. I would like a screaming while falling phone and the relativity thing would be great for teaching relativity! RecentlyChanged (talk)

Where can i get one of these? :D UniTrader (talk) 04:11, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the "scream when falling" thing and the "flightaware" stuff can be done somehow with Tasker. 141.101.103.206 04:23, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Designer?

I suspect it was either Black Hat or Beret Guy, but I'm not sure which. A collaboration? 173.245.54.45 04:47, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

This sounds like something straight out of aperture. 108.162.221.55 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Simulates alternate speeds of light

Yes, useless as a feature on all the time; but it would be a cool app. Mark Hurd (talk) 05:57, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Absolutely. Where can I get an app like that?108.162.225.157 06:22, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Travelling at above the simulated speed of light should give an imaginary time dilation, not a negative time dilation. gamma = 1/sqrt{1-v^2/c^2} Thus, after such travel, the value of the clock would be a complex number. 108.162.219.35 15:42, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Changed the speed of light to 2.99x10^8

You guys should probably clarify that the relativisic affects actually depend on how long your trip is or how long you wait to sync your phone. For relativity to be observable on a 12 hour trip, Minimum speed for a phone would have to be 300 m/s or 3000 m/s for the clock to measure even a microsecond/millisecond difference in time. This is well known thanks to the certain time dilation experiments with planes. Your GPS chip helps account for an error of 7 to 47 microseconds per day. My point is in terms of time dilation, relativity mattering depends on how long a trip or waiting for synchronization is. By synching, I literally mean with the atomic time clock or with a GPS satellite. The synchronization of your phone with satellites is actually a couple of hundred microseconds, so normally even a light changing clock might not have as noticable changes as you might think. 108.162.238.225 13:49, 2 May 2014 (UTC) --108.162.238.225 13:49, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Yeah sorry forgot to login. does anyone know how to do the indices formatting other than eg 2.99x10(littlex) rather then 2.99x10^x? Jonv4n (talk) 06:29, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Whas^sup? 141.101.89.220 07:43, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

relativistic effect

Forgive me if I'm wrong, I'm not a physicist but the above explanation says that relativistic time dilation affects only occur at a significant fraction of the speed of light. It is my understanding that time dilation occurs at any speed, but is only perceptible/noticeable/measurable at very large fraction of the speed of light. Unless I'm mistaken the above it should reflect this. 173.245.56.91 22:24, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Phone may attract/trap insects; this is normal. Funnier if you take it as a reference to the spider problems Mazda keeps on having... 108.162.215.64 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

About the attracting insects ... I would expect this to be normal feature in night. Trapping, however ... -- Hkmaly (talk) 09:08, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

There are other indications that the phone is at least partly biological, this being the strongest evidence of that. Insects could be the power source for the biological part(s). 173.245.54.45 14:07, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Siri

Could the Siri bit be a reference to Portal? When I first read it, I remembered this GLaDOS quote: "Your Aperture Science Weighted Companion Cube will never threaten to stab you, and in fact cannot speak. If your Weighted Companion Cube does speak, please disregard its advice." Could be completely wrong; just a thought. 173.245.54.51 10:09, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps Siri is beling likened to the "ATMOS" device in the Doctor Who episode "The Sontaran Stratagem" Esp666 (talk) 11:20, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Lamest. Comic. Ever. And I'm not just saying that because he doesn't mention the Ubuntu Touch OS. – tbc (talk) 12:22, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Realistic case

Car telephones and the first cellphones were rather expensive, at least in Germany fake "realistic cases" were sold without any working electronics in it. Usage was to impress silly friends. 173.245.52.204 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I thought this was aimed at the iPhone. Apparently these have an elegant case, but I have never actually seen one. Everyone I know covers their iPhone with some hideous plastic monstrosity, since the design is not practical.--108.162.218.59 14:10, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Could possibly be a reference to the "Realistic" brand, which was used on various products sold by Radio Shack (U.S. electronics retail chain) from 1954 to some time in the '90s.108.162.219.76 16:14, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Screaming when in free fall: my first Android app!

I love the bit about screaming when in free fall: that was the first Android app I hacked together back in 2009 (based on the tricorder app). Nealmcb (talk) 13:49, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Title Text

Hover-over title text was truncated; love it. 14:43, 2 May 2014 (UTC)Pocono Chuck (talk)

you must have an really old firefox browser -- you should update !!! 199.27.130.210 16:23, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Happened to me. Using whatever the latest IE is at the moment. It cut off at nause-. 173.245.54.54 17:13, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Price includes 2-year Knicks contract. ... but a contract with the Knicks would only appeal to pro basketball players.

Nonsense. Lots of "regular" folks would buy this phone it it meant they got to play in the NBA. 199.27.128.84 16:26, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

I agree with this. A whole lot of people who think they have "skillz" would buy the phone if they got into the NBA. 173.245.54.54 17:14, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

This may also be an indirect way of stating that it is incredibly expensive, seeing as those sort of contracts usually involve you getting compensated. --108.162.216.33 13:41, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

"Your mobile world just went digital" is an inversion of the marketing-speak that was common when what we'd now regard as smartphones first began to be adopted by the mainstream (iPhone/G1 era, since Symbians, Blackberries, and early WinMo tended to be business or enthusiast devices). People already ubiquitously e-mailed, browsed the Web, etc...what was presented as 'new' was that you could now do it from your phone. 173.245.54.58 19:09, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

I think the "Under certain circumstances, wireless transmitter may control God" statement might be a reference to how transmitting devices have to comply with FCC regulation and not interfere with aircraft or government communications. Perhaps this phone is intended to be noncompliant so as to control high-level electronics, even at supernatural levels. 173.245.56.66 21:11, 2 May 2014 (UTC)Dbrak

Frictionless

You could hold a frictionless phone just by hooking your little finger under the bottom edge, regardless of friction gravity will hold it into your hand. Just like you could leave it in a bowl without it jumping out. 108.162.229.72 19:12, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Unless you held your pinky perfectly balanced, horizontal and motionless, a frictionless object would slide right off it, as it would off any flat surface that is not perfectly horizontal. 14:13, 3 May 2014 (UTC) 108.162.242.4 13:15, 3 May 2014 (UTC)DCollins

Wouldn't you be able to hold it somewhat like a normal phone, if you hold a finger under the bottom of it? 173.245.54.54 17:08, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Why the hell this funny phone isn't available at the xkcd store?

I would buy if the price would be in the range of other articles there. Just for fun...--Dgbrt (talk) 19:30, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Root needed

I think that needing root for ajust the volume may be a allusion people needing to root Android to change fonts or to take screenshots (untill version 4.x). FlavianusEP (talk) 23:04, 2 May 2014 (UTC)