Smart phones should not be new to me. Though I haven’t owned one until a few weeks ago when we bought LG Optimus V phones, I have of course been around them since the first iPhone came out. I would’ve thought that I would be well-familiar with them now but one insight into smartphones really surprised me.
Up until the smartphone, computers were by and large completely ignorant of their surroundings. For instance, old-school computers would not have noticed any effects at all during our recent 5.9-magnitude Virginia earthquake, but a smartphone could’ve! Smartphones can detect movement and motion and direction and position and orientation: a myriad of physical-space properties which were completely alien to most computers not very long ago. Some ambitious geek could write herself an app which aggregates the accelerometer readings of thousands of smartphones and uses that data to detect and pinpoint earthquakes, for instance. This is what fascinates me about my new smartphone: the potential it offers for physical-space interaction.
I am amused to find that my smartphone’s utility as a phone ranks a distant second to its utility as a computer. And the applications that make use of my smartphone’s spacial abilities are my favorite applications. Apps like Google Sky Maps really show the potential for this interaction. The Tasker app is quite powerful in its ability to make the smartphone do certain things based on criteria, including physical criteria. This app alone is worthy of weeks of study and experimentation.
I’ve owned handheld computers before and I was always critical of applications written for those devices that didn’t appreciate or take advantage of being run on a handheld device. The applications that will soon change the world will be the ones which are aware of the world. I can’t wait to see where creative developers will take us.