Relaxing with Runcible, the circular 'anti-smartphone' | Hacker News Reader

Relaxing with Runcible, the circular 'anti-smartphone'

engadget.com

85 pointsivank43 comments

The anti-smartphone I'd love to see is a small bluetooth communicator with a mic, buzzer and speaker in some sort of small badge, with an SDK like pebble's, but it has to be small and thin. You could do an awful lot of notifications with subtle sounds, and of course have phone calls, send voice messages or text messages (speech to text) via your phone. Love the filtered notifications idea here though.

Once you start adding a screen, the battery requirements go through the roof and you need something very big, at which point it's like a cut-down phone without the internet connection and battery life and size become a constant issue. The Apple watch is chunky and ugly in its current incarnation because of these problems, and unfortunately this device is pretty big too.

We need internet connected things which complement phones and enhance our lives, not compete with them in different form-factors. Another thing that'd be nice is some sort of colour epaper scroll for a reader which winds up really tight into a tube. It is interesting to think about where the future could take us with printable electronics and better performance, but it feels like we're on the cusp of all these technologies becoming possible, but not there yet - a little like 90s feature-phones - promising but not persuasive.

Have you seen the Samsung neckband thing? It does vibrating notifications, has a mic and reassembles into earphones.

I wouldn't use it myself but I'm glad someone's experimenting with weirder form factors.

Your epaper scroll idea reminds me of what Rob Pike said at the very end of this interview: http://rob.pike.usesthis.com/

>The world should provide me my computing environment and maintain it for me and make it available everywhere. If this were done right, my life would become much simpler and so could yours.

>I would allow the setup to force me to carry a computer screen around, as long as it rolled up and fit inside something the size of a pen and had touch input when unrolled. As long as it had no local storage.

From a usability perspective that would be very cool. But I think we'd need some big changes to our laws. Under current U.S. laws, data you have in your physical possession is subject to greater legal protections than data you have hosted at a 3rd party. Switching to a life without local storage today means accepting lower protections for privacy and legal defense.

That's a good point. I guess that could be mitigated by operating your own server, though that would never be a popular option.

I would allow the setup to force me to carry a computer screen around, as long as it rolled up and fit inside something the size of a pen and had touch input when unrolled. As long as it had no local storage.

Sounds just right, though I'm not entirely sure about the networked data, I guess that is probably the way the world will go. If everything is on the network, there's not much need for local storage.

The hurdle is still the ubiquitous SMS. Speech-to-text is good enough these days that I use it a lot, but I usually have to fix maybe 1 in 10 or 20 words. How would you do that with no screen?

If you're a heavy user you'd use a device like a phone or tablet for typing/viewing, like today's smart watches accompanying phones but the phone being more of a client.

SMS = heavy user? I can't send a single text without needing to correct something. How do I correct _anything_ with no screen?

(That said I am impressed with how far speech to text has come)

I would indeed be fine with (what is essentially) a Star Trek comm badge.

I think the real innovation that would allow this, though, would be defining standards for "thin client" devices (or apps, I guess) that could auto-pair with these wearables. Imagine if there was a smart discovery protocol that let you take any screen+keyboard "terminal" device (phone, tablet, notebook) and ephemerally, zero-config attach it to a nearby display-less device. It'd be like plugging an old-school TTY into the device's serial port, but with Bluetooth/NFC+Bonjour or whatever is needed to find whatever's nearby, and (say) HTML5 instead of ncurses.

Then, you could let your comm badge (and your watch, and your HUD-glasses, and your e-reader, and your iPod Shuffle equivalent) have UI affordances only for their most important functions—and "break out" everything else (settings especially, but also secondary things like adding books, rating music, installing apps...) into its remote-terminal UI.

This would also be a helpful thing for home network routers, network printers, etc. You could even take the LCD off a DSLR and make it a dumb opaque box with a lens on a tripod, relying solely on remote-terminal UI for setting up and taking the shot.

I think the real innovation that would allow this, though, would be defining standards for "thin client" devices (or apps, I guess) that could auto-pair with these wearables.

Yes, good idea, that'd be really nice. When everything has some intelligence in it, the biggest challenge is going to be the disparate devices communicating and doing what they are good at while handing off data and network stuff to a larger device like a phone or computer.

You can sort of see this stuff coming if you squint, but it's quite there yet because of concerns like battery life and weight.

"It runs on Mozilla's Firefox OS platform and lets you make calls, ask for directions and browse the web. So when you're heading out to grab dinner with friends, you can leave your smartphone at home and avoid the temptations of Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat."

I don't understand these two sentences at all. If you can browse the web, how does it help "avoid the temptation"?

It's a nice looking round thingy, but "anti-smartphone"?..

Box model sites on a round screen... Sure, you could if you really wanted.

On a side note - this device actually piqued my interest... dunno why?

Because its round and made of wood? ;)

Yep, that is the most likely reason. Also the dude holding it at the top looks like he could be a lovable-rogue antiques dealer, in a similar vein to Lovejoy.

Because Firefox OS has no Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat Apps (yet).

But if you have a browser you don't need the apps... Just log in via the appropriate website.

using the twitter mobile website removes all temptation for me.

Having a browser != having a browser you want to use. The e-ink kindles have browsers that would only be well suited to an emergency.

Not true. Facebook & Twitter have official apps, meaning they have a manifest to let the OS install them, and in Twitter's case they have a bit more integration, like being able to use Activities to attach pictures.

This reminds me of the aesthetic in Her [1], which was summarised nicely here [2] by the production designer:

  "You could say that Her is, in fact, a counterpoint to that prevailing vision of the future–the anti-Minority Report. Imagining its world wasn’t about heaping new technology on society as we know it today. It was looking at those places where technology could fade into the background, integrate more seamlessly. It was about envisioning a future, perhaps, that looked more like the past. “In a way,” says Barrett, “my job was to undesign the design.”

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/ [2] http://www.wired.com/2014/01/will-influential-ui-design-mino...

There seems to be an interest in making, and perhaps owning secondary mobile devices. The problem, IMO is that most people have one SIM for their phone. If phone companies would give you a 2nd SIM for the same number, I think a new little market could emerge for them.

I was thinking this just yesterday. Samsung have a nice new smartwatch with "full" phone capability (i.e. its own 3g connectivity, can make calls on it), but the salesman told me you simply can't get it on contract in this country yet.

Its quite easy to get a second SIM, and multiple SIM-slots are one of the reasons for Androids' popularity in various non-US markets, namely: Asia. Its very common to have two SIM's per phone - one for private, one for work, or one for calls and one for Internet.

Yes, but the point wouldn't be to have two numbers on the same phone, but two phones with the same number, so you'd need two SIMs with the same number.

I don`t know over there but here in Brazil you can get multi sim contract with carriers which will give you extra sims on the same account. I think the extra sims have only data access so they are good for tablets and modems but I don`t know if they have a callable number.

Well its probably different for your market, but I have no problems calling my telco and asking for a second SIM for my account - same #, same plan, etc.

An actual phone SIM? How does that work? Do both phones ring? Does the one phone stop ringing when you answer the other? What happens when you're talking on one phone, does the other phone ring?

I mean lots of places offer secondary data SIMs for your phone plan, but never one that gives you the same phone number.

One is set as the 'parent' SIM and incoming calls will only ring on that phone. If you're using the master and another call comes in, it can be configured to either go straight to voicemail, or ring on the second phone. Quite convenient.

This is available all over Asia - as usual, the Western countries seem to either be being held back by some regulation, or simply behind the times.

Many operators do give you multiple SIM cards associated with one number/subscriber. From quick glance these include Orange, Etisalat, Maxis, TeliaSonera...

T-Mobile will send you as many SIM cards as you want for the cost of shipping.

You can usually just tell your carrier you lost the SIM card if they don't formally offer duplicate SIMs.

This is surprising. I thought the whole point of SIM cards was to prevent duplicates on the network. I guess it's still better if they retain control over who is duplicating them. But I would expect them to revoke the "lost" one to avoid fraudulent access by anyone who finds it.

Video review of demo version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlo8jHHeP8Y

Perhaps it's time we stop beating around the bush and just release a StarTrek communicator already. Looking for screenshots, I found someone already did: http://www.orionlabs.co

That's about 5 times the size of a StarTrek comm badge and far uglier, still, at least it's a step in the right direction.

Surely you're thinking of the TNG-VOY-DS9 era combadges, not the clunky flip-phones from the original series?

Oh yes probably.

Indeed, definitely ugly, but I could imagine the Star Trek universe having an ugly duckling communicator like this somewhere between the original series and "The Next Generation". :P

My Moto 360 is this and more. The Runcible just looks like a poor re-invention of the smartwatch. Its almost looks like a comically archaic pocketwatch version of a smartwatch, which is a form factor no one is really playing with.

I love having Google now and Google search just one whisper away from my wrist. Just the other day at dinner, we were discussing the ages of certain celebrities and I just whispered, "Ok google, how old is William Shatner" and got the proper answer with a headshot. I didn't just get a link to wikipedia or a list of search results - I got the actual result with next to no effort. Pulling out my phone and doing this just seems like a pain in the ass now. The Android Wear products are full of hidden gems like these.

The minimalist mobile device is already here. The Runcible guys seem to have been leapfrogged by AW and by whatever Apple finally releases.

Its almost looks like a comically archaic pocketwatch version of a smartwatch

I'd call it a dumbphonepocketwatch.

I assume the name is a reference to Edward Lear's favorite nonsense word? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runcible

It reminds me Siemens Xelibri series.

Chumby 2.0

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