Fun & Original things to do with Android

davidapple · Nov 5, 2010

Hiya I'm Dave. I have a Desire. It can do so much stuff: Wi-fi, Bluetooth, GPS, Record video & audio, Play Video and audio, FM radio, vibrate, shine a light, know which way up it is... In a way, it's kind of aware of it's surroundings in the same way that animals are. Don't you think?

Anyway, I've seen a few people make robots and use Android phones as the brains. It's kind of cool.

I want to see someone build something that takes advantage of EVERYTHING that the Desire can do. Not necessarily a robot, but something that can almost think for itself or at least simulate thinking using all of it's 'scenes'.

I just feel like lots of the apps focus too heavily on 1 or 2 features without reaching the full potential of these devices.

Pryomancer · Nov 5, 2010

Aside from the fact that there isn't a need to use every single feature for one purpose, all of the things a smartphone can do would drain the battery very fast if they were all on at once.
There's also the workload. The average processor is about 500MHz, I'd say. The top end ones have 1GHz. With all that information coming in, it'd overwhelm the processor and memory. There's not enough computing power in a smartphone.

And regarding what you say about it being aware. I don't think that's at all a valid claim. Phones have a few basic inputs, and code that handles them. They don't have the capacity to learn, like an animal does. Even the most complicated robots today still run from code. They give the illusion of learning, but really it's just because there's code that lets them do it. If they came across something unexpected, they could only react in a limited numbers of ways, only reacting inside their programming.

lunatic59 · Nov 5, 2010

Pryomancer said:
If they came across something unexpected, they could only react in a limited numbers of ways, only reacting inside their programming.

The same thing can be said for a lot of people who would probably be better off if it was possible to let them use their phones for brains.

davidapple · Nov 5, 2010

I think you're kind of missing the point. I'm not saying someone should build a learning app or for an app to use everything at once. Here's an example of what an app could do.

You leave your phone at home with the app running. Everything is turned off except for the audio in. When someone says 'Dave', the phone takes a photo, wifi turns on and emails you with the photo and says that someone has said your name. If you txt/email back, then your phone calls you and you can hear what people are saying. Then if you press a certain button, your phone vibrates, the light turns on and says plays a robot voice saying 'Stop talking about Dave' and if they look at the screen it's a photo of Dave looking mean.

This kind of thing makes use of loads of features in a creative way but not at the same time. Why are there not millions of other apps like this take use loads of features in a creative way?

davidapple · Nov 5, 2010

Anyway, forget power consumption because soon we'll all have solar powered clothing.

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