xkcd Phone 6
xkcd Phone 6
[A smartphone is shown, the screen is slightly wider than the case, in the middle is a photo lens, and at the right bottom a small extra part is added to the screen.] [On top a bracket ranges nearly over the entire width of the case. The text reads:] Full-width rear camera [The label at the photo lens is:] Front camera (centered for eye contact during video chat) [The label on the extra part says:] Extra screen [At the bottom below the case a label reads:] Wireless charging port
[The labels left to the phone are:] 4k pixels (50x80) Radium backlight Sterile packaging College-ruled Broad spectrum SPF 30 Pre-seasoned Burns clean coal Includes applicator Fonts developed by NASA Shroud of turn-style facial transfer unlock High thread count CPU Screen goes past the edge Safe for ages 6-8 months, 10 months, 18 months-3 years, and 12 years and older
[The labels right to the phone are:] CDC partnership: Phone automatically administers seasonal flu vaccine to cheek every year 12-function Dishwasher safe GPS transmitter 3-G acceleration Portable, solar-heated Pore-cleaning strip Maximum strength Never needs sharpening Can survive up to 30 minutes out of water Exclusive Audubon Society app identifies birds and lets you control their flight
[Text below the phone:] Introducing The xkcd Phone 6, VIII, 10, X, 26, and 1876 We didn't start this nonconsecutive version number war, but we will not lose it. ™®©°

This is the sixth entry in the ongoing xkcd Phone series , and once again, the comic plays with many standard tech buzzwords, and horribly misuses all of them, to create a phone that sounds impressive but self-evidently isn't to even the most ignorant customer. The previous comic in the series 1809: xkcd Phone 5 was released 7 months before this one and the next 2000: xkcd Phone 2000 was released 8 and a half months later.
This comic was released the day after Apple announced their new iPhone 8 and the higher-end iPhone X (pronounced iPhone 10) with facial recognition features.
Front camera (centered for eye contact during video chat) A front camera has become a common feature of smartphones. The camera lens is located on the same side of the phone's case as the main screen, making it possible to capture the image of the user's face looking at the screen and display the interlocutor's face on the screen simultaneously, enabling video chat. However, as the camera is usually located above the screen, when the user looks at the displayed image of the other person they direct their eyes at the center of the screen and not at the camera's lens. This makes it appear on the other end of the chat as if the person talking was looking down and not making eye-contact, which can be an uncomfortable situation for many people. For this reason, professionals involved in movie or TV-making, like actors or reporters, are trained to look straight into the camera's lens while talking, which creates impression of looking straight at the viewer's face. During a video chat, however, looking into the lens of an above-screen camera does not allow one to see the interlocutor's face clearly because it is then in the peripheral field of vision.
To solve this conundrum, Randall proposes locating the camera lens right in the middle of the screen. The user looking at the the other person's face on the screen would then also be looking at the lens, creating an impression on the other end of the chat that they are looking straight at the other person. This is absurd, since the lens would then take place of some of the center pixels of the screen, which would probably mean that it could not display the center part of the captured image of the other person's face. This could include features such as eyes and/or lips, which play an important part in non-verbal communication. Locating the camera lens in this way would probably also interfere with the touch-screen function. It would probably make other applications on the phone difficult to use, since virtually no user interface is designed to accommodate a blind spot in the center.
The idea of having the camera in the middle of the screen is only currently absurd, however, as advances in technology may eventually enable such a feature to work without disturbing the appearance or function of the phone's display, unlike the visual disturbance clearly indicated in the comic. For instance, previous technological advancements have improved the functionality of the display, starting with adding touch sensing. The touch sensitive hardware of the phone is located in a thin layer above the hardware, that generates the image for the display, and capacitive touch sensing technology is less obtrusive than previous resistive sensing. While it has yet to be released to market, certain manufacturers are aiming to place a phone's fingerprint reader underneath the screen, for seamless functionality. Although it may be difficult at this point, figuring out a way to have a camera capture images through the array of pixels on the screen is not completely beyond imagination.
Full-width rear camera Historically, there has been an 'arms race' among phone manufacturers to increase the 'size' of the rear camera, in terms of the number of pixels they can capture. This is not typically accompanied by equivalent increases in physical size, though. Phone cameras tend to have lenses which are quite small, and round or square -- measuring the same in width as in height. On this phone, the 'full-width' lens appears to be a long, thin strip, like an oval or rectangle shape. This could allow the camera to gather a lot more light, potentially working in low light situations. However the lens would be more vulnerable to damage and dirt. Unless a very large sensor was used, focusing the image could be a problem, since cell phones are typically not very deep.
CDC partnership - phone automatically administers seasonal flu vaccine to cheek every year U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is a government agency tasked with addressing public health concerns, such as infectious diseases, including seasonal flu. A common way of limiting the spread of an infectious disease is vaccination , which most often involves administering a specially prepared vaccine via an intramuscular injection , though researchers have investigated other delivery systems, including aerosol, or microneedle injection. Uptake of vaccination is often poor, and many governments routinely use various different campaigns and techniques to try to encourage more people to get themselves vaccinated.
This feature implies that the phone would automatically perform some form of injection once a year, administering a vaccine via a small aperture while the user is holding the phone to their cheek during a call. However, the placement of this component is dubious, as it would line up with the user's ear, rather than their cheek, during a phone call. It may be designed to detect the fraction of a second during which your cheek would be in the appropriate position (perhaps after a phone call, as you may be dropping the phone from your ear), and administer it at that moment; this would conveniently prevent disturbances to a majority of conversations.
A further absurdity to this feature is that the vaccine is different every year, in order to account for various mutations causing different, and typically new, strains of the virus, which is the reason it has to be administered yearly. The CDC bases the combination of strains on a best-guess of what will be the most significant strains in circulation over the upcoming year, so in order to have the current year's vaccine, the user would have to physically load the new version into the phone for later administration, or there would have to be a mechanism to synthesize the concoction on-board the phone, and an associated logistics framework and digital standards for OTA delivery of specifications for the year's vaccine.
12-function Most smartphones can be used for more than twelve different things [ citation needed ] . However, this may refer to the twelve basic functions of algebra (identity, squaring, cubing, square root, logarithm, exponential, reciprocal, sine, cosine, greatest integer, absolute value, and logistic), or the twelve function keys on a modern keyboard (more than the ten on the original IBM PC keyboard). Alternatively, it may be a reference to calculators: basic models are sometimes referred to as four function calculators (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), and complex scientific calculators may advertise 250 or more functions.
Dishwasher safe Waterproofing has become a much-pushed feature of many recent smartphones, with manufacturers competing on the claimed resilience of their models. A phone that was truly dishwasher safe would be ahead in this race, as it would have to be able to withstand high-pressure jets of water, high temperatures, and caustic effects of detergent over significant periods. This is often listed as a selling point of items used for preparing, serving, or storing food, such as plastic containers or crockery, which a normal person might want to clean using a dishwasher, but it seems excessive for phones, which are rarely cleaned with anything more than a quick wipe, and most people would not intentionally attempt to clean in a dishwasher.
GPS transmitter Many smartphones have a receiver for the Global Positioning System , which allows a phone to compute its position based on signals from the constellation(s) of GPS satellites. However, a device with a "GPS transmitter" would broadcast signals that would interfere with the GPS receivers of all devices nearby. This might be used in some form of differential GPS, broadcasting signals from a known location to allow more precise determination of other locations, or such a system might be used to confuse or control devices, such as drones, which navigate using GPS.
3-G acceleration This is a mixture of three unrelated concepts with similar names. In computer graphics, " 3-D acceleration " refers to GPU hardware that speeds up handling of three-dimensional data, such as shapes rotating in space. In physics, "3 Gs of acceleration" refers to speed increasing at a rate of 3 times the acceleration of Earth's gravity, or approximately 30 m/s². In cellular networks, 3G refers to a standard for data communication. GPUs, accelerometers, and compatibility with 3G networks are all normal features of modern smartphones. "3-G acceleration", however, is not a real term, and doesn't describe any meaningful feature of a phone. It appears to suggest that either the phone is capable of self-propelling with 3 Gs of acceleration, which doesn't seem particularly useful, or, perhaps more feasibly, that it has some way of increasing the data transfer rate over a 3G connection.
Portable, solar-heated Portability is pretty much the entire point of using a mobile phone, so advertising portability is rather redundant. Solar power charging could be a very useful feature on a phone, but solar heating usually applies to plumbing, where a water tank is heated by the sun and used to supply hot water to taps. Technically, as the sun heats up everything it shines on, the phone is in fact solar heated. However, since avoiding overheating is a particular challenge in smartphone design, deliberately capturing solar energy simply in order to heat the device would seem rather counter-productive.
Pore-cleaning strip Pore-cleaning strips are sticky strips designed to be applied to the skin and then pulled away to remove dirt and oils from the pores, with the intention of reducing spots and improving the complexion. The location shown for this feature would be inconvenient and irritating, as it would come into contact with the face every time the phone was held to the ear to make a call; something sticky on that location would be very annoying for clean-shaven people and extremely painful for anyone with facial hair. It would probably also result in that strip of the screen becoming obscured by an accumulation of facial gunk. Pore strips have been mentioned before in 777: Pore Strips .
This may act as a sensor for the Shroud of Turin-style facial transfer unlock , whereby the phone would collect the dirt, oils, and microflora from the user's face when it is pressed against the phone, and use it to verify their identity.
Maximum strength Medicines are often sold as "Maximum strength", usually indicating that they contain the highest dose of active ingredients allowed by law, or allowed without a prescription. For phones, there are sometimes "hardened" or "ruggedized" versions, which are designed to survive harsher environmental conditions, such as surviving drops and collisions, excessive water, dust, etc. Maximum strength here could indicate such a "ruggedized" phone, though this would be hard to achieve with a screen that extended past the edges.
Never needs sharpening Phones do not need to be sharpened in the first place [ citation needed ] . This is a feature more likely to be found in a knife advertisement -- the slogan is infamous for hawking knives that cannot easily be sharpened, like a serrated blade -- or a mechanical pencil. Since the screen goes past the edge, it might be sharp enough to cut through things, much like a knife, though the phone would be unsafe to carry and handle if that were the case [ citation needed ] .
Might also refer to sharpening the camera, which usually means adjusting the lens till an object is in focus. Most phones have autofocus and rarely need to be manually sharpened.
Can survive up to 30 minutes out of water This is a play on the common IP-rating of water resistance, which is typically rated for submersion to a rated depth for 30 minutes. A phone which could only be used or carried for 30 minutes before it needed to be immersed in water would be rather inconvenient, although the phone short circuiting would likely not be an issue, as the phone is "dishwasher safe."
Alternatively, either this phone's target market could be whales, dolphins, or other marine life, such as octopodes, or the feature could be optional. While such a feature would prove to be extremely useful for aquatic customers, the "solar-heated" feature would undoubtedly be inhibited significantly as water depths increased.
Exclusive Audubon Society app identifies birds and lets you control their flight The National Audubon Society is a non-profit organization dedicated to the conservation of nature, and mainly of birds, which also organizes open birdwatching events. There are apps that attempt to identify bird species, for example, from a photo or audio recording of a bird made by the smartphone itself, though the Audubon Society's own app does not offer anything this interactive. An app allowing you to control the bird's flight would be way cooler and might work using the built-in GPS transmitter, confusing their navigation systems. However birds do not use GPS to navigate [ citation needed ] , and it would fly in the face of the Audubon Society's core activity. This is a reference to drones (which could be thought of as artificial "birds") which are often controlled by a smartphone app. This may also be a reference to 1425: Tasks , in which an app that can recognize if a bird is on camera is proposed.
Extra screen Some phones advertise an additional display or display mode, often giving access to basic information, such as battery level and notifications without needing to activate the main screen function. Typically, this would be a low-power mode of operation of the normal screen, or else a form of display on another surface of the phone, such as the side or rear. Here, it seems to be an oddly shaped rectangular extension on the bottom of the main screen. This may have been added to make up for the loss of screen estate due to the center camera.
Wireless charging port A port for wireless charging is an oxymoron, since wireless charging has no wires and thus has no need for a port, unless it is required for fuel for a fuel cell (see clean coal, below). This may be a jab at Apple's removal of the headphone port from their previous phones.
Safe for ages 6-8 months, 10 months, 18 months-3 years, and 12 years and older Usually an item is deemed safe for a particular age or older, or (in the case of toys) is recommended for a particular age range. This is unusual in that it's a hodge-podge of age ranges with no apparent reason why some ages are safe and others are not. It may be a parody of drug commercials that list several age ranges for which the drug had to be separately approved.
Screen goes past the edge A parody of the trend of "edge to edge" displays in recent generations of smartphones, or phones whose screens curve partway around the edge of the phone. In this case the screen is wide enough that it could curve partway around the edge, except the spillover does not actually form to the curves, resulting in a screen that is wider than the body of the phone. If the spillover is rigid, this would make the phone rather uncomfortable to hold, and the spillover is at risk of chipping off.
High thread count CPU A CPU thread is a task the CPU performs. Several threads may share memory, making them a process. Threads are meant to run in parallel and the operating system distributes the workload on the available hardware execution units. These execution units are sometimes called hardware threads, especially when there is more than one per processing unit (or core). For example, the Intel Core i7 7700 is considered a 4-core, 8-thread CPU. The vague "high thread count" statement could make sense in this context, however, it is most likely a joke about bedding, where it is an actual selling point; the thread count of a textile signifies the density of fibres in the material, and a high thread count is an indicator of a high quality fabric.
Shroud of Turin-style facial transfer unlock The Shroud of Turin contains an image of the body and face of a man, originally believed to be Jesus Christ , before the Shroud was found to be 1200 years too young. Some theories suggest the image was created by interaction with or transfer from the body that was wrapped in the shroud. Presumably, to unlock this phone, the user would have to physically press their face against the phone, the way the Shroud-Man's image was allegedly transferred to the shroud. This is probably a reference to the iPhone X's FaceID unlock, which uses a photograph of your face, augmented with spatial information, to unlock itself, and which had attracted significant criticism immediately before this comic came out.
Fonts developed by NASA This may be a reference to many advertisements that claim that their product uses technology developed by NASA in an attempt to make it seem more impressive. NASA technology does often tend to be quite strong and advanced, as they claim at their spin off website. Between 1975 and 1992 NASA used the "worm" logotype in its insignia; it was a special font that omitted the horizontal bar in the capitalized letter A. However, it would not be particularly impressive to use this, since fonts have very little to do with NASA's core operations [ citation needed ] , and it potentially implies that it would not support many other common, and perhaps more readable, fonts.
This may also be riffing on the urban legend that NASA invested vast amounts of research in developing a pen that could write in space, rather than just using a pencil.
Includes applicator This is found on the packaging for many products, such as tampons, cosmetics, and paints. An applicator for a phone would be absurd, since the phone cannot be applied, spread, inserted, or attached to something else. However, this may be referring back to the aforementioned yearly vaccine.
Burns clean coal Clean coal is coal that is burned so that it does not give off as much soot, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury, or other pollutants as "normal" coal, or methods of burning coal that give off relatively less pollutants. This may be advertised by energy companies trying to appear to be using clean energy, due to pollution concerns. Coal burning power plants are usually quite large, so a traditional coal fired thermal-electric plant in a cell phone would be absurd. fuel cells , which produce electricity by oxidizing some fuel, can be small enough to fit in a cell phone, but they do not typically burn coal. The cordless charging port might be a receptacle for refueling the phone, using liquid or a fuel cartridge.
Pre-seasoned Pre-seasoned typically refers to cast iron cookware which is ready to use out of the box, as opposed to needing to season it with oil and heat. It can also refer to packaged meats which are ready to cook without needing to be seasoned with herbs and spices, or timber that has been dried and is ready for use. A more technical definition of 'seasoning' means operating devices, usually calibrated standards or battery cells, for a while in the factory, to make sure the device meets constant performance requirements without deviating or diminshing too much. In this sense it could apply to the battery of the phone.
Broad-spectrum SPF 30 The xkcd phone somehow gives a sun protection factor (SPF) 30 level of protection from sunlight, meaning that it blocks all but 1/30 of skin-burning UVB radiation from sunlight, though it is not clear whether it is the user or the phone itself which is protected. Phones do not typically require protection from sunlight [ citation needed ] . On the other hand, if, when placed between the user and the sun, the phone allows >3% of the radiation through, this would be remarkably more translucent, and therefore less effective, than most phones (which allow much less than 1% of UVB, or any other visible or near-visible wavelength, through). It would also be an inefficient method of protection, since it would only be able to protect a relatively small patch of skin.
College-ruled College-ruled is a style of notebook paper having narrower than normal lines, in order to fit more text per page. That the phone is college-ruled suggests that there are lines permanently displayed on the screen, which could obscure any images on the screen, and make any text that doesn't line up with the lines hard to read. Defective screens can show similar patterns; for example, the iPhone 6 "touch disease" causes regularly spaced vertical lines to appear on top of the screen. Here, it is possible that the manufacturer is trying to pass off screen defects as features.
Sterile packaging Useful for medical supplies, less so in a phone. There are numerous studies and resulting 'news' articles looking at the number of bacteria, fecal samples, and so forth, that can be found on the typical phone, typically with a sensationalist take on how you will be 'shocked' to discover this. However, sterile packaging would do little to counter this, since most of this contamination is accumulated after the user removes the phone from the packaging and begins using it.
Radium backlight The discovery of the radioactive element radium sparked a brief fad in which manufacturers of consumer products began coating them with a paint containing radium and a radioluminescent substance, such as zinc sulfide, which converted the radiation from the radium into visible light. In particular, some clock and watch makers painted the faces or hands of their timepieces, allowing the time to be read at night without an external power source for the light. However, it was eventually realized that regular exposure to radium could result in radiation poisoning, particularly for the workers assembling and painting the products. A radium-based backlight would therefore be both potentially dangerous (especially for an object carried on one's person much of the time) but also largely useless, as the radioluminescent light is rather dim compared to conventional phone back lights.
4K pixels (50×80) "4K" typically denotes a screen with a width of ~4000 pixels, such as 4K TVs, which have 3840×2160 pixels, or about 8.3 million pixels total. That would be an outstanding resolution for a cell phone. Here, however, the "fine print" in parentheses clarifies that 4000 is actually the total number of pixels, not the width, which would be remarkably low resolution for a smart phone. As a comparison, the old Commodore VIC-20, with a resolution of 176 × 184, would have over 8 times the pixels of this phone. It is more comparable to the screen resolution of the sturdy Nokia 3310, which boasted a total of 4032 pixels, positioned 84 × 48.
In the caption below the phone Randall presents many different version numbers:
The "nonconsecutive version number war" referenced below the version names refers to several recent phones, and possibly operating systems, released consecutively with nonconsecutive version numbers, including:
Randall's ludicrous naming scheme aims to 'defeat' all of these by eclipsing them. By counting parallel version numbers xkcd defeated Apple 6:2.
The symbols at the end are ™ for trademark, ® for registered trademark, and © for copyright. The degree symbol ° after the letter C could be a play with degree Celsius. The use of all four symbols after the phrase is ridiculous, as ™ and ® indicate trademarks with opposite registration statuses, slogans can't be copyrighted, and the degree symbol usually has no meaning when applied to text.
In the title text Randall recognises privacy concerns about the facial recognition feature. A picture of a face will only be used for facial recognition, but never stored on the device nor transmitted to the internet. A small side effect may be that the famous selfie pictures aren't possible anymore, as well as video calls. Ironic, considering that the reason the camera is in the middle is to allow easier video calls.
[A smartphone is shown, the screen is slightly wider than the case, in the middle is a photo lens, and at the right bottom a small extra part is added to the screen.] [On top a bracket ranges nearly over the entire width of the case. The text reads:] Full-width rear camera [The label at the photo lens is:] Front camera (centered for eye contact during video chat) [The label on the extra part says:] Extra screen [At the bottom below the case a label reads:] Wireless charging port
[The labels left to the phone are:] 4k pixels (50x80) Radium backlight Sterile packaging College-ruled Broad spectrum SPF 30 Pre-seasoned Burns clean coal Includes applicator Fonts developed by NASA Shroud of turn-style facial transfer unlock High thread count CPU Screen goes past the edge Safe for ages 6-8 months, 10 months, 18 months-3 years, and 12 years and older
[The labels right to the phone are:] CDC partnership: Phone automatically administers seasonal flu vaccine to cheek every year 12-function Dishwasher safe GPS transmitter 3-G acceleration Portable, solar-heated Pore-cleaning strip Maximum strength Never needs sharpening Can survive up to 30 minutes out of water Exclusive Audubon Society app identifies birds and lets you control their flight
[Text below the phone:] Introducing The xkcd Phone 6, VIII, 10, X, 26, and 1876 We didn't start this nonconsecutive version number war, but we will not lose it. ™®©°
