AcryPhone – A Phone-Shaped Slab of Acrylic to Help You Beat Smartphone Addiction

The AcryPhone is a rudimentary device designed to mimic the look and feel of a smartphone in order to help users conquer their handheld addiction.

As much as we try to deny it, most of us are addicted to smartphones. We try to limit the time we spend looking at them, but we constantly find ourselves instinctively reaching for them in search of that little dose of dopamine our brains crave. That’s just one of the many signs of an addiction that’s much more serious and difficult to overcome than we like to admit. Luckily, we will soon have an alternative that looks and feels just like a smartphone but has none of the features that got us hooked to it in the first place.

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Gadget Funeral – The Lucrative Service of Preserving Old and Broken Gadgets

A unique “gadget funeral” service allows people to preserve outdated and broken devices that they have become attached to.

They say you shouldn’t get attached to material things, but most of us can’t really help it. Whether it’s our first car, the house we grew up in, or even an old phone, we tend to get attached to our worldly possessions. And since mobile phones and tablets have become almost an extension of ourselves, it makes sense that some of us have trouble upgrading even when it is obvious that our old gadgets are struggling. That’s where China’s gadget funeral service businesses come in, allowing users to preserve their obsolete devices as framed, deconstructed works of art that can be hung around and admired forever.

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Designer Creates Wearable Third Eye That Lets You Walk Safely While Looking at Your Phone

An industrial design student has created a high-tech third eye that can be affixed to a person’s forehead and look out for obstacles as they walk, while their real eyes are glued to their smartphone.

There’s no denying that smartphones have become an integral part of modern life. Most of use spend hours every day staring at our handhelds, and some even do it as we walk or drive. You’ve probably seen funny clips of people falling into water fountains or holes  because they were looking at their phones, or maybe you’ve actually experienced something similar. Well, thanks to Minwook Paeng’s Third Eye, you’ll be able to text or browse Instagram as you walk, without fear of accidents.

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iPhone 11 Accidentally Dropped in Lake a Year Ago Still Works

A man who accidentally lost his iPhone 11 while paddling on a lake in March of last year recently posted photos of the handheld miraculously retrieved from the bottom of the lake after more than a year. The handheld was in need of a recharge, but otherwise worked perfectly!

The owner of the iPhone, a Taiwanese man named Chen Yj, recently took to a public Facebook group to tell the amazing story of how his handheld survived a year underwater. Writing on the Bangfu1 Commune Facebook group, Chen said that he lost his iPhone 11 in March of 2020, while paddling on Sun Moon Lake, in Taiwan. Photos shared on the public group show him wearing an orange vest, with the Apple handheld around his neck. At one point, the man falls off his board, and the phone can be seen sinking to the bottom of the lake. Little did Chen know that he would not only retrieve his phone a year later, but it would be in perfect working condition.

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Restaurant Offers Free Pizza to Customers Who Lock Away Their Smartphones

Smartphone addiction is getting so bad that restaurants are offering customers free food if they agree to part with their handhelds for the duration of their meal.

Curry Pizza Company, a pizza place in Fresno, California, is offering customers a “Talk to Each Other Discount”, which requires customers to agree to have their smartphones locked up while they are in the restaurant and simply talk to each other during their meal. The discount is only applicable to groups of four people or more, all of whom must be carrying a working smartphone. If they qualify for the offer, diners will receive a free large pizza that they can enjoy on their next visit, or, if they’re in a giving mood, donate to the homeless in downtown Fresno.

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This Company Will Pay You $100,000 to Give Up Your Smartphone for a Year

Enhanced water company Vitaminwater recently launched a contest challenging entrants to give up their smartphones and tablets for a whole year. That’s a tough thing to do in this day and age, but the Coca Cola-owned company is ready to make it worth your while by putting up a $100,000 prize.

Vitaminwater’s #nophoneforayear challenge requires entrants to go a full 365 days without using a smartphone. That means giving up their own phone and tablet as well as agreeing not to use anyone else’s handhelds either. The selected person will have to sign a contract committing to no smartphone usage for the duration of the contest, and if they are found to have adhered to the strict rule for the duration of the contract, they will be rewarded with $100,000. Sounds easy enough, but first you have to convince the company that you’re the right person for the job.

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Finnish Cocktail Bar Bans the Use of Smartphones To Encourage Real-World Social Interaction

Chihuahua Julep, a cocktail bar that opened in central Helsinki, Finland, in August, has banned patrons from using smartphones inside the venue to encourage real-world social interaction.

Initially, the owners of  Chihuahua Julep only encouraged visitors to put their smartphones away so that the light from their screens wouldn’t ruin the bar’s ambience, but after seeing that those who followed the recommendation seemed more relaxed and at the same time more engaged in conversations with their friends, they decided to impose an outright ban on handhelds. Now, anyone wanting to enjoy a drink inside the venue must store their phone inside a box on arrival.

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Chinese City Introduces Special Walkway for Smartphone-Using Zombies

Authorities in the Chinese city of Xi’an recently inaugurated a special sidewalk lane designed for “phubbers” – people who walk while staring at their smartphones and ignore everything around them.

Painted red, green and blue and featuring pictures of smartphones, the special lane is located on the busy Yanta Roan, in Xi’an, and is 80cm wide and 100m long. Chinese media reports that a large shopping mall overlooking the smartphone-user lane had been asking authorities for it over a month, which suggests that it’s just a marketing scheme. However, it turns out that the special sidewalk lane is actually a safety precaution for “phubbers”. Cars often come onto the pavement in front of the mall, sometimes barely missing pedestrians who have their eyebvalls virtually glued to their smartphones, so the lane is supposed to keep them out of harm’s way.

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Resourceful Chinese Ingenious Use Perpetuum Mobile Device to Fool Their Pedometer Smartphone Apps

In China, health insurance companies apparently offer discounts to people who can prove they get enough exercise every day by using their mobile phones to monitor their movement. Only instead of actually going for walks, some people use ingenious perpetuum mobile devices to cheat the system.

I first learned about China’s “mobile phone cradles” a few days ago, after seeing a picture of a strange perpetuum mobile device with a smartphone attached to it, tweeted by Chinese comedian Dashan (@akaDashan). He had spotted it in a restaurant in Harbin, where patrons were invited to use it to trick their phones’ pedometer apps into recording thousands of steps artificially, while they relaxed, and had a bite to eat or a drink. Why would anyone want to do that, you ask? Well, that’s where it gets interesting.

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Woman Goes Blind in One Eye After Playing Mobile Video Game Almost Non-Stop

A 21-year-old woman from Dongguan, China, was recently diagnosed with with retinal artery obstruction in her right eye, after playing a popular smartphone game almost non-stop.

The woman, known only as Wu, apparently noticed that she couldn’t see anything with her right eye on October 1st, while playing her favorite mobile game, King of Glory. Thinking she was just tired, she went to bed, but when she woke up the next day, she was still blind in her right eye. Her parents took her to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with a serious condition known as retinal artery obstruction. This usually only occurs in older patients, but doctors said that Wu’s eyes were incredibly fatigued by the stressed of constantly staring into the small smartphone screen.

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Russian Company Sells Religion-Themed Gold-Plated iPhone 7 Smartphones

With Easter only a couple of days away, there’s no better time for Christians to draw closer to God, and a Russian luxury goods company wants to help rich folks do just that with a collection of gold-plated iPhone 7s engraved with religious symbols and prayers, and blessed by an Orthodox bishop.

Caviar Phone has been creating limited edition gold-plated smartphones for a few years, even making international headlines in 2014 for a Putin-themed iPhone aimed at rich Russian patriots. But what really caught my eye was its Caviar Credo collection featuring the same type of gold-plated iPhones but this time engraved with Orthodox symbols like crosses and holy icons, and prayers like “Our Father”. Credo also includes Apple smartwatches with similar decorations.

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The NoPhone Air – Plastic Phone Packaging with Nothing but Air Inside

While millions of people around the world eagerly awaited the release of Apples’s new iPhone 7, dozens of attendants at the Fireside Gathering – a no-phone, no-reception event held at a summer camp two hours west of Ottawa – had to make due with a “revolutionary NoPhone Air, a simple phone package with nothing but air inside.

“We are very proud to introduce the least-advanced NoPhone ever,” inventors Chris Sheldon and Van Gould told Fireside Gathering attendees on September 10th. “We took away the headphone jack. And then we took away everything else. It may look like nothing is in this packaging. But that’s what’s so beautiful about it.”

Sheldon and Gould are part of a growing smartphone-resistant counterculture, and claim they came up with the idea for the NoPhone after seeing everyone at a rooftop bar in New York with their eyes glued to their smartphones. “The NoPhone was created to combat the rapid decline of real life social engagement that has stemmed from chronic smartphone use. It’s sleek, plastic design serves as an idle hand’s security blanket and is devised to alleviate the constant need humans have to hold a mobile device without preventing users from fully experiencing their immediate surroundings,” they wrote on the NoPhone official site.

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Man Marries His Smartphone at Las Vegas Chapel

Last month, artist Aaron Chervenak drove from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, Nevada to finally take the love for his smartphone to the next level by marrying it at a small wedding chapel. And yeah, in case you’re wondering, he even put a ring on it.

A study conducted by internet security giant Kaspersky found that a quarter of people ranked their smartphone as more or equally important to them as their parents. For a lot of us, it’s the last thing we interact with before going to sleep and the first thing we check when we wake up. It’s with us pretty much 24/7, and we connect with it on so many levels. “We look to it for solace, to calm us down, to put us to sleep, to ease our mind, and to me that’s also what a relationship is about,” Aaron Chervenak said. So in a sense, my smartphone has been my longest relationship. That’s why I decided to see what it was like to actually marry a phone.”

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Super-Secure Smartphone Costs $16,500, Weighs Half a Pound

How much is privacy worth to you? If the answer is “a lot” and you have tens of thousands of dollars to burn, you might want to check out the new Solarin Android smartphone, a $16,500 handheld that its makers claim is “the best in the world”. For that price, it better be!

Solarin has been in development for the last two and a half years and was finally launched this week, during a high-profile event in London. Its makers say it has the best display, the best smartphone camera, the loudest and richest speakers, more 4G LTE bands than any other phone and Wi-Fi speeds up to ten times faster than today’s networks. Sounds like a Trump product, doesn’t it? But’s it’s not, we checked. Solarin is the first product of Sirin Labs, an Israeli startup targeting the premium sector.

Those claims are certainly very impressive – although reports state that the reality is a little bit different – but what’s supposed to really set Solarin apart from all other commercially available handhelds is the unmatched security it offers. “Solarin comes with Zimperium state-of-the-art mobile threat protection that thwarts the broadest array of advanced device, network, and application mobile cyberattacks, without impairing usability or functionality of a top-of-the-range smartphone,” a Sirin Labs press release claims. “In addition, Solarin incorporates the most advanced privacy technology, currently unavailable outside the agency world. Sirin Labs partnered with KoolSpan to integrate chip-to-chip 256-bit AES encryption, the same technology that militaries around the world use to protect their communications, offering the strongest possible mobile privacy protection worldwide.”

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German Town Installs Ground Traffic Lights for People Looking at Their Smartphones

While zombies thankfully still remain a figment of our imagination, ‘smombies’ – people walking while staring at their smartphones – are very real and a growing cause for concern. Fed up of having to constantly alert both locals an tourists to pay more attention to their surroundings to avoid serious accidents, authorities in a small German town have come up with a more proactive solution – embedding traffic lights in the pavement to make them visible to people constantly looking down at their phones.

The seemingly ridiculous safety measure was put in place after two pedestrians in the town of Augsburg were recently hit by quiet electric street trains as they crossed the street without looking up from their phones. They both escaped with only slight injuries, but a 15-year-old girl engrossed in her smartphone on a street in nearby Munich wasn’t so lucky. She was hit by a tram and dragged along for several feet before she died. So authorities in Augsburg decided to act, installing ground level traffic lights at two tram stops last Tuesday. The lights flash red every time a tram is approaching, or when the regular traffic light turns red.

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