“Hello, Spock? Yes… it’s me…”
Turning on the screen, I can totally envisage Spock’s face staring out to greet me. Earthling, we have taken over your phone.
I’ve never really been interested in phones (except for drooling over Arne’s iPhone down at the pub, and incessantly playing Cooking Mama every time I walk past the iPhone shop) that is until now, the ultimate super gadget/phone, the retro/futuristic hybrid that is the HERO Android phone. It looks and feels like it just fell off the nearest Star Trek mother ship.
The iPhone cult status in the west hasn’t exactly translated over to Bangkok, purely because of the pricing. As we speak, hoards of people are going to Jatukram Ramathep to buy the iPhone ripoff from BIG C in Saphan Kwai. It looks exactly like an iPhone, it even has a massive Apple logo on the back… though when you try to slide the pages, you have to really, really whack down on the “touch screen”, but you can stick a TV aerial into it and watch your favourite soap opera down at the market (while whacking catfish over the head). Now you can’t get that on the iPhone, can you now?
So the iPhone remains a trendy underground commodity here, with young creative types and rich kids who can afford the luxury. I predict that the HERO Android phone will be just as popular, or perhaps a bit more, due to its familiar Windows/Google-friendly platforms, widgets and abilities to be personalizes. It also offers micro-blogging, Facebook, augmented reality apps (augmented reality combines your real life-surroundings with extra information and interactions)… not to mention it has a sexy outer shell.
Of course it’s all synced in with Google. That means mail, chat, interactive maps and all the widgets, as well as being able to watch flash content on any website, not just YouTube vids like on the iPhone.
The apps for Android have only just started, but there are already some interesting and very innovative ones, like the Google Sky-Maps. It’s basically an interactive planetarium, which allows you to point the phone to the night sky, tells you which constellations you’re looking at, and it can locate planets and stars.
There’s also the first Android made RPG, “Parallel Kingdom”, which blurs the boundaries between dwarves, wizards, and your own surroundings (i.e. — the local bar, or the walk to the market, and then… Haha! Whack! You can whack and fight little forest creatures in real time (basically the guy at the bar next to you)). Great fun!
I’m sure there must be an “eject” button somewhere, I just haven’t found it yet.
Look out, Spock!
Links:
Parallel Kingdom App for Android