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Notes -
I got a new phone recently. Not a great one, it's a downgrade on my previous phone in several areas and the march of enshittification in phone design is clearly continuing at pace.
But that topic has been done to death and I wanted to ask something else of the community. What uncommon or interesting things can you do with a modern smartphone?
It occurred to me as I was transferring everything over that I have barely changed how I use a smartphone since I bought my very first over a decade ago. I can emulate more games consoles now, and I grudgingly use some of the digital wallet features, but otherwise all the years of development doesn't seem to have changed anything at all. Are there cool features or applications that I'm missing out on?
On saturday I was out with my wife and she asked me if I could identify a bird that was close. I didn't know, so I picked up my phone, took a picture, used the Google Lens AI search (not sure how to call that feature) selected the bird in the picture, and it IDed the bird immediately, I had the answer within seconds. That felt close to the experience that ads make the latest "AI features" on phones to be. It has to be said though that this was probably the most perfect use of that feature I've had; I've had this phone for 9 months I think and there was never a better use for it.
That reminds me of https://xkcd.com/1425/
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