A smart phone is a cool thing. It's kind of like a regular cell phone. You live your whole life doing perfectly fine without it, but once you get one, you can't imagine giving it up.
And then there are the apps. I have an innate sense of economic conservatism: if it's junk and I can live without it, I don't buy it. That doesn't mean I didn't spend $1.8 on a couple of games, and considering to spend more to get the pro-version of an app that creates color palettes from any photo you have or just take one on the spot.
So I walk into this coffee shop and love the interior decoration and style? I snap a few pictures and store them in a folder labeled interior stuff and use the app to get the color palette. Speaking of which, this might be a good time to look and see if Pinterest has an app so I can easily upload those pictures I like.
There's another app that measures your heart rate which I love because it's making me better myself. For instance, I was being particularly lazy about exercising the past couple of months. Once I learned that my resting heart rate is around 86 bpm, I was annoyed! I started weekly sprinting (not necessarily running, but exercise to get your heart going) sessions after that. My resting heart rate a couple of weeks later has dropped to 72 bpm. I plan to get it down into the sixties.
I'm a geek by nature, so I just had to know how it works. You put your finger on the camera lens and it lights up the LED flash for several seconds. As your heart pulses, your finger rhythmically goes slightly up and down on the lens causing the light exposure to the camera to change. It then counts the pulses of change. Isn't that so cool?? I know it's not very new, but who would've even thought of that a few years ago!
This is what I'm loving about apps. It's the elemental creativity. You get a few available tools. A camera, LED light, a GPS, a gyroscope, and a touch screen. After that, it's completely up to a lot of people's creativity on how they combine those things to solve a problem or create a new useful tool. It kind of reminds me of primitive man: playing with thick mud, looking at fire, and deciding to bake the different shapes of mud in the fire and create pottery.
And then there are the smartphone machines. I've played around with several. iphone, samsung, htc, nokia, etc. Personally I love the htc ones. They seem to perform better and are way cooler than the rest. I don't know a single person who had bought an htc phone who regretted it. Problem is, while I was wary of large phones and large screens when I first got mine (a nice 4.0 in screen), I'm now interestedly eying the new models with the 4.7 in screens. Oh well. Too soon. I only got my phone... wow has it really been less than 5 months ago? It feels like I've had my phone forever. Luckily in Lebanon, we buy phones sans contract, so you buy whatever the heck you want, and chuck your favorite service inside. I can understand people feeding their obsession with a new phone every 6 months to a year.
When I first got here just over 2 years ago, bbm was a thing and only teenagers addicted to IM'ing were using it. There was nothing else besides it other than the normal overpriced cellphone service. In just this last year, the world of internet, smartphones, and telecommunication in Lebanon has literally exploded. One of the main reasons why the government finally got fast internet connections through connecting Lebanon through the IMEWE cable, was because the big phone companies finally realized the potential for market growth. Nothing like big business lobbying eh?
It's not just business people. Every 12 year old kid with a little Holiday money or allowance saved probably has a smartphone and one of those cheap marketed for teenagers plan. You can see them at the mall, in cabs, at the cinema, happily tapping away. My aunts (one in Kuwait and the other in Lebanon) have iphones which they use to take pictures of their tomato plants and supermarket outings to send to each other. EVERYDAY!! I witnessed my aunt take a picture of a very normal bowl of cherries we were having and send it, to my other aunt's reply of "OMG!!! I miss cherries!".
Err.. yeah. My cousin and I exchanged stunned stares, and I was little "WTF has happened since I was here 4 or 5 months ago!?"
My other aunt, who to be honest while being a successful career woman has only a very basic grasp on smartphone use and potential, seems to have a new smartphone on her desk every few months. Prepaid cards are as cheap as $9/month which was unthinkable just a few year ago, and you could get 100MB of 3G service on your phone for just $10/month (which can be taken from you regular phone balance). Since I have 50$ accumulated on my balance which I can never seem to use up, it's a pretty nice deal. Advertisements, which I have to say the Lebanese are pretty darn good at, have started to revolve around smartphone and tablet themes.
I got into a cab the other day, and the cab driver had a smartphone! It's like a smart phone mania has swept the country!
And then there are the apps. I have an innate sense of economic conservatism: if it's junk and I can live without it, I don't buy it. That doesn't mean I didn't spend $1.8 on a couple of games, and considering to spend more to get the pro-version of an app that creates color palettes from any photo you have or just take one on the spot.
So I walk into this coffee shop and love the interior decoration and style? I snap a few pictures and store them in a folder labeled interior stuff and use the app to get the color palette. Speaking of which, this might be a good time to look and see if Pinterest has an app so I can easily upload those pictures I like.
There's another app that measures your heart rate which I love because it's making me better myself. For instance, I was being particularly lazy about exercising the past couple of months. Once I learned that my resting heart rate is around 86 bpm, I was annoyed! I started weekly sprinting (not necessarily running, but exercise to get your heart going) sessions after that. My resting heart rate a couple of weeks later has dropped to 72 bpm. I plan to get it down into the sixties.
I'm a geek by nature, so I just had to know how it works. You put your finger on the camera lens and it lights up the LED flash for several seconds. As your heart pulses, your finger rhythmically goes slightly up and down on the lens causing the light exposure to the camera to change. It then counts the pulses of change. Isn't that so cool?? I know it's not very new, but who would've even thought of that a few years ago!
This is what I'm loving about apps. It's the elemental creativity. You get a few available tools. A camera, LED light, a GPS, a gyroscope, and a touch screen. After that, it's completely up to a lot of people's creativity on how they combine those things to solve a problem or create a new useful tool. It kind of reminds me of primitive man: playing with thick mud, looking at fire, and deciding to bake the different shapes of mud in the fire and create pottery.
And then there are the smartphone machines. I've played around with several. iphone, samsung, htc, nokia, etc. Personally I love the htc ones. They seem to perform better and are way cooler than the rest. I don't know a single person who had bought an htc phone who regretted it. Problem is, while I was wary of large phones and large screens when I first got mine (a nice 4.0 in screen), I'm now interestedly eying the new models with the 4.7 in screens. Oh well. Too soon. I only got my phone... wow has it really been less than 5 months ago? It feels like I've had my phone forever. Luckily in Lebanon, we buy phones sans contract, so you buy whatever the heck you want, and chuck your favorite service inside. I can understand people feeding their obsession with a new phone every 6 months to a year.
When I first got here just over 2 years ago, bbm was a thing and only teenagers addicted to IM'ing were using it. There was nothing else besides it other than the normal overpriced cellphone service. In just this last year, the world of internet, smartphones, and telecommunication in Lebanon has literally exploded. One of the main reasons why the government finally got fast internet connections through connecting Lebanon through the IMEWE cable, was because the big phone companies finally realized the potential for market growth. Nothing like big business lobbying eh?
It's not just business people. Every 12 year old kid with a little Holiday money or allowance saved probably has a smartphone and one of those cheap marketed for teenagers plan. You can see them at the mall, in cabs, at the cinema, happily tapping away. My aunts (one in Kuwait and the other in Lebanon) have iphones which they use to take pictures of their tomato plants and supermarket outings to send to each other. EVERYDAY!! I witnessed my aunt take a picture of a very normal bowl of cherries we were having and send it, to my other aunt's reply of "OMG!!! I miss cherries!".
Err.. yeah. My cousin and I exchanged stunned stares, and I was little "WTF has happened since I was here 4 or 5 months ago!?"
My other aunt, who to be honest while being a successful career woman has only a very basic grasp on smartphone use and potential, seems to have a new smartphone on her desk every few months. Prepaid cards are as cheap as $9/month which was unthinkable just a few year ago, and you could get 100MB of 3G service on your phone for just $10/month (which can be taken from you regular phone balance). Since I have 50$ accumulated on my balance which I can never seem to use up, it's a pretty nice deal. Advertisements, which I have to say the Lebanese are pretty darn good at, have started to revolve around smartphone and tablet themes.
I got into a cab the other day, and the cab driver had a smartphone! It's like a smart phone mania has swept the country!
I remember when I made fun of dad for having an old basic cell phone when he obviously could afford something cooler.
ReplyDeleteNow I'm on that bandwagon. I'd like a smart phone and can see how helpful it'll be but I keep saying "meh, mine works just fine, I'll wait until this one is broken...".
Though the heart rate pulse thing idea is cool.