I’ve been very stressed lately and have been doing some window shopping to calm down. I’m interested in gadgets, but a lot of things can just be replaced with apps. I realize a phone won’t replace very large appliances like refrigerators or washing machines so I’m trying to scope my question to portable devices. So what are some portable devices or gadgets that their specialization hasn’t been replaced by smart phone apps? Extra points if they’re super useful and reliable.
A Vibrator.
Have I got an app for you!
:-D ~~~
RrrrrRrrrrrRrrrr~RRRRRRRRIs that the same though? I don’t have the right parts to know, and the procedure to find out makes it easier to ask.
Never had an older Nokia?
Video games. At least for me. Mobile games suck.
If you haven’t experimented with roms and emulators yet, many old school games play great on a smartphone. The biggest downside is the touchscreen controls overlay will never compare to an actual controller, but it’s close enough that it’s… well, close enough.
Nintendo’s entire library from their inception as a company through all of their N64 content is a grand total of like 20gb, the vast majority of which being N64. Roms from previous console/handheld games are tiny.
No idea what the current best emulators are; for the games, drop into places like thepiratebay and search for things like “SNES Romset” for the entire library.
Use a VPN. Yar.
play great on a smartphone.
Physical controls are a necessity for retro games. Get a Miyoo Mini Plus or equivalent. They make retro games playable.
Physical controls are significantly better, but not strictly necessary. The kicker is needing to press 3+ buttons at the same time, like in Mario 64 pressing forward to run, Z to slide, and A to jump is a PITA on touchscreen.
I’ve played through Mario 64, Zelda OOT and Zelda MM all on touchscreen on mobile, and it’s -again- good enough. It scratches the nostalgia itch. But 100%, if you have a bluetooth controller or something, use it.
You can get a controller for any smartphone out there. Also RPG’s play fine with touch controls, that’s how I played Pokémon games with no issues.
There are also fan run repositories of games hosted through Myrient and the Internet Archive if you just want some specific titles or need a particular version for patching.
For emulation, personally I like RetroArch over individual emulators for simplicity. Can recommend SameBoy & Gambatte for GB+GBC, mGBA for GBA, melonDS DS for NDS, & Snes9x for SNES. All are accurate (so not likely to make a game bug out) & run fine on my midrange phone.
The touch controls work fine for games where timing/precision matters less, and for the rest I just use a BT controller. Xbox & PS ones are compatible, I believe, & there are some great quality 3rd party ones (like 8bitDo) out there.
RetroArch is a good one, and is the go-to for most people. It covers just about every console you could want. But it also suffers from some bloat due to having so many features, and config can be kind of a pain if you’ve never done it before. If you’re just looking for a more basic “just fucking boot it up and play” emulator, maybe an app like Delta (Nintendo consoles) or Gamma (PSX) would be less bloated (and potentially run smoother.)
I have a bluetooth controller with a phone mount on it. There’s a gadget for OP to explore!
You could probably use RetroArch for nearly every system out there, including MAME core which could itself probably even emulate your smart fridge in the future, given enough time for developers.
That’s why I bought a 3DS :)
I think a ds lite is still the best value in gaming although the prices have gone up in the past few years. You can get a decent bundle with games and accessories for $50 plus theres those sd card cartdridges for it and you can play gba cartdriges. Battery life is unfathomable and they’re pretty durable
plus theres those sd card cartdridges for it
If you’re willing to get a flashcart for your NDS, you might as well just get a 3DS and load up some custom firmware instead. It’s stupid easy to hack with the SD card slot, and you can play whatever games you want for free. No need to fiddle with flashcarts when you can just use the 3DS’ built in SD card slot instead.
My old passcard died, and I can’t find a replacement?? Any ideas?
Now when I think about it, it was maybe the flashcard (like the gba linker) that died, gotta dig that up and check…
I have modded by 3DS, so I can play any GBA, DS, 3DS games or any emulator for old systems (like GB/GBC, NES). The worst though is that the scaling of DS games sucks on 3DS screens, so I might actually get a DS Lite or DSi XL in the future just because of this.
Early in the mobile gaming world, it was looking like mobile games would catch up with consoles within a few years, but then Angry Birds made more money than anyone ever imagined with half thr effort, and then Clash of Clans did the same thing again, and suddenly the idea of working hard and making a good mobile game seemed like a silly waste of time.
The only game I play is marvel snap. I’d consider emulators with a Bluetooth controller or something
Totally agree. The only game I play on my phone is Balatro.
I just emulate things nowadays. I have pretty much the entire NES, SNES, GBC, GBA, N64, NDS, and PSX libraries on my phone ready to go. And it works perfectly fine with any Bluetooth controller, because touchscreen controls are… Well… Complete fucking garbage.
I’m currently playing through the NDS version of Chrono Trigger in my free time. And since all of the games are stored locally, it doesn’t use any data at all. I recently went camping for a week, and my iPad lasted like 7 or 8 hours of playtime (on low brightness because I was in a tent at night) off of a single charge.
What app do you use?
RetroArch is the go-to for most people, because it can emulate just about anything. But first time setup can be kind of a pain if you’ve never done it before; The UI for settings can be unintuitive, you need to dig for what you want, and it’s easy to forget to save your settings because the save option is in an entirely separate page. It also suffers from some software bloat, because it has so many features that it can get bogged down when emulating more intensive systems.
For Nintendo I tend to use Delta. It’s simple, has cloud saves via Google Drive, and runs everything flawlessly. For PSX, I tend to use Gamma. Again, it has a simple interface and syncs via Google Drive.
phones can stream games from the computer in your local network/internet though. makes for a great experience actually if you get a good grip/controller for it.
also most video games arent portable.
Pocket knife. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a phone case out there with a box-knife-like insert for a razor blade.
…infact, brb.
Please send pics of “Knife Phone”.
Edit:
Well fuck me, turns out not only does it exist, but there are quite a few options!
There’s this dude, which tries to be an entire Swiss army knife. Buyers pretty consistently complain about the build quality though.
This one has a sheath for a removable knife:
And this one uses the mechanism I had envisioned when I was typing my original post, but uh… cuts a little differently than I had expected, and is ofc the clear winner:
Fuck yeah! Knife Phone and Fuck You Phone!
My dumb ass would forget this is my phone case and try to go through TSA lol
Electric Toothbrush. Keeping up with Dental Hygiene is important too!
Own one. Definitely recommend it and ribbon floss.
Would love to have one, but my neurologist said even slight vibrations in my mouth can fuck with my epilepsy. That means a migraine because my medicine prevents seizures. Going to the dentist is an affair that wrecks me for the whole day.
I was just thinking this morning that it’s kinda odd that there’s no cell phone that also doubles as a multi-meter for measuring electronic current. I guess it’s because in theory you’d need to also carry around a set of probes with you?
I think you are on to something, add a basic o-scope and it’s pretty much magic.
You invented the tricorder. Nice.
One of my favorite apps (not updated, doesnt work very well anymore), but I still have it installed:
We already have that, and a function generator.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.sbaudio.oscope
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.keuwl.functiongenerator
There is a really cheap one that uses the phone for the smarts so it can be good for cheap.
Hi-fi audio recorders with builtin microphones. As a bass player, I deeply resent phone mics and speakers.
Phones suck for anything audio related in general.
My Ipod classic can run laps around my phone in terms of audio playback and its a recentish flagship.
also, a good music player is nice! not having the hassle of using a phone while driving or doing literally anything else is nice for listening to music and the like.
You underestimate my ability to find and download new music to my player. It’s not that I can’t, it’s just that I forget to.
i feel this, i totally forget to update my libraries haha
Vibrator
We had Dildroid like 16 minutes after the initial Android release… 😂🤷
And yet I own more vibrators than I do smartphones
Nokia 3310 would disagree,
It is a ‘gadget’
Shank
The galaxy notes solved that… when thay were around.
I’ll answer my own question, “Fans”. You can absolutely buy a small fan or even one you can wear, but a smart phone can’t blow air to cool a person down.
I stand corrected.
I had a very compact fan that plugged right into the lightning port on iPhones. I got a new phone and it stopped working, unfortunately
Honestly most of the non digital functions of a phone are still inferior to it’s dedicated counterparts, but I would argue that a phone is good enough for 99% of people.
So get a pocket multitool thingy, I always carry one in my bag and it has helped me quite a few time in my life.
Which multi tool? I carry a Benchmade bugout knockoff and a genuine Leatherman skeletool, ifixit Minnow screwdriver set and a generic basic screwdriver with small/large Philips and flathead in my work bag. Oh and a small adjustable wrench… Covers 95% of my work.
Yeah, the issue with multi tools is the same issue with phones; They’re mediocre at a lot of different things. A dedicated multi-bit screwdriver will almost always be better than a multitool. A solid pair of pliers will almost always be better than a multitool. Et cetera, et cetera…
But in a pinch, a multitool is better than nothing. And a multitool is a hell of a lot easier to carry as a “just in case” thing than an entire toolbox of individual tools. As a freelancer I habitually keep a lot of tools in my trunk, but I don’t want to walk all the way out to my car just to tighten one screw. So I also keep a multitool around as a “good enough” solution.
Jeez, nice!
I have this thing from victorinox:
My stuff is pretty basic. I’d carry something like that if I owned one already, over the years I’ve pretty much shed anything I don’t use enough on a regular basis. My whole kit is probably $80, mostly cause of the Leatherman. The bugout is a knockoff from AliExpress and I LOVE it. $15 is a steal for that style/size/design for a pocket knife.
Pagers for Hospitals.
To be clear: Hospitals use pagers because they use a longer (and much lower bandwidth) wavelength, which is affected less by things like thick fire-resistant walls. Hospitals are built like bunkers so that things like fires don’t require the entire building to be evacuated. Pagers can still reliably get signal even in the basement of a hospital, when behind multiple fire-resistant walls and solid concrete floors. Texting has effectively replaced pagers for 99% of the population. But hospitals still use them because reliability is prioritized in the medical world; No hospital wants to lose a patient because a doctor was in the basement and didn’t get a text.
There was a good episode of Planet Money which went into this. I addition to what you said, when doctors would get texts, they were more likely to dismiss the message and not respond immediately which was more dangerous.
Also they don’t mess with radiology and it lets doctors have a way of being contacted that doesn’t give patients their number.
Laptops! I have a gaming desktop computer and also a gaming laptop that I use if I’m going to be somewhere other than my house for more than a day. Mobile games pail in comparison to what can be played on a decent gaming laptop. I wouldn’t even think about trying to run even a rudimentary 3D game on my 3~ish year old smartphone which has 3-5 seconds of input lag for everything LMAO
Wilderness beacon. Rarely any signal out there. Yes you can an arm and a leg for special service though
I know some phones are starting to work with satellite comms,
so these may be replaced by cell phones in the near futureheh, maybe not. See the comment below. At least currently, I have several friends who still have wilderness beacons.They’ll never replace PLB/EPIRBs unless they bake in 406Mhz and 121.5Mhz communication. Satellite devices aren’t reliable enough for SAR. I’d even argue that they won’t replace Satellite Communicators - battery life isn’t good enough and the connection stability isn’t good enough
Professional work tools come to mind. Laser measures, camera gear, flashlights, 3D scanners, calculators, synthesisers, etc. Sure, there are apps that offer the same functions, but they usually lack the precision and reliability expected from professional tools. There are also some great gaming devices (such as the Analogue Pocket) that probably offer a better experience over gaming on a smartphone.
I carry a spare usb stick and some low-capacity microsd cards, because sometimes its just easier to hand someone a file the old fashioned way.
Sometimes I do play games on my phone, but whenever possible I use a usb or bluetooth gamepad, because touchscreens aren’t supplanting buttons any time soon.
And of course the Steam Deck is my favorite gizmo, not just because it can run every PC and emulator game, but also because it doesn’t have any bullshit preventing me from installing mods. If phone modding was easy and accessible i’d be willing to spend more on a phone.
