Gbaji wrote:
This makes wonderful sense if the only thing you ever want to do in your life is test yourself for STIs. Once you realize that you might want to do more than one thing and that combining the tools for doing all those things in some way will save you a bundle of money, you'll see that it makes more sense the other way around. If you've already paid $250 for a phone, why pay an additional $150 for an STI tester,
Because you're not URINATING on your phone! That alone is worth getting another device.
Gbaji wrote:
and another $50 for blood sugar detector, and another $100 for an exercise monitor that can store biometrics, and another $50 for a first-alert monitor that can send a warning to emergency care if needed, and god knows how many other separate devices you might want or need, when you can instead pay a much smaller amount per operation by buying a smaller/simpler device that can connect with your existing phone and leverage its components for the heavy lifting?
Imagine someone with a heart condition wearing a small monitor connected via bluetooth to his phone. So if he has a heart attack, the device detects it, sends the data to the phone, which realizes the readings indicate a heart attack and automatically dials for emergency service. Now, you could run around with a separate monitor with its own brains and wi-fi/cell capability which could do the same thing, but why? You've got a phone that does that. All you really need is a simple monitoring device that can communicate with the phone. Let's assume you are a jogger and you like to track your progress. Right now, you might wear a monitor that tracks your distance, speed, heart rate, etc. But it's a separate device that maybe stores a tiny bit of data. Why not send that stuff to your phone and have it store the info so you can chart your progress over time? There are dozens of applications for this sort of thing, all of which become very very cost effective when you think of the phone as a central brain to which you can connect any number of much less expensive devices.
And that's just in the area of medical sensing devices. There are nearly limitless applications for this sort of thing.
Once again, there's nothing wrong with having a phone that does multiple things. That's kind of the whole point of having a smart phone in the first place, but there is a limit and urinating on your phone is an example of that limit.
My point is less about the efficiency of the application and more about the fact that you're urinating on your phone, because that's uh.... disgusting. Given that I'm sure there exist a number of people who love the idea but not willing to do so with their phone, it seems in this particular case (i.e. not heart, speed and distance monitors) that it would be more effective to make a separate device. Doing so would gain more money as well.
As you have written, it is more convenient to use your phone as opposed to carrying multiple devices, as I said with my camera example. At the same time, there is no denying that you are losing a noticeable audience who wouldn't want to urinate on their phone. This same type of audience is less noticeable for other devices such as cameras, gps systems and the list that you mentioned.