How does Google’s paper phone, like this, look like a memo decades ago?
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Three Easy Life” (ID: IT-3eLife), author Three bacteria.
In today’s fierce market competition in the mobile phone industry, the major manufacturers in order to better sell goods can be said to be the Eight Immortals across the sea. From the hardware configuration point of view, the screen needs to have a 90Hz refresh rate, the main control to Qualcomm Snapdragon 855Plus, COMS has to reach 100 million pixels, stereo dual speakers and 4D shocks are also available, and even folding screen models have begun to be listed. However, have you heard of “paper phone”?
This week, Google announced the launch of a series of “Digital Wellbeing Experiments” to explore ways to get rid of mobile phone reliance on mobile phones, including UnlockClock, which counts the frequency of unlocking mobile phones. PostBox, WeFlip that lets friends open the DoNotDisturb mode, DesertIsland that restricts the user’s time in their designated application, and lets the user set a specific application group so that it can only be used at a specific time and avoid distractions. Morph.
But to say that this project is the most eye-catching, it must be PaperPhone (paper phone). Seeing the word “paper phone”, I believe many people will mistakenly think that this is similar to the concept model developed by Queens University of Canada, Arizona State University, and electronic paper company Eink. It is reported that this paper phone is a combination of a flexible display and a flexible motherboard, including phone calls, texting, reading e-books, and listening to music and other common features.
But unlike the concept machine mentioned above, Google’s “do not be evil” is obviously notIn the mouth of the smashing, the “paper phone” in the mouth is really a “mobile phone” made of paper. Of course, common sense tells us that mobile phones as electronic products obviously do not need paper, and paper can’t make transistors and batteries. So what does Google’s so-called “paper phone” grow?
In Google’s introduction, “paper phone” is a free app that allows users to write content on the app and then send the content to be printed to the printer, eventually printing a “up to” 7 Contact details, current weather forecast, calendar schedule, task list, screenshots, images, and a map navigation.
It seems that Google’s paper phone is essentially the same as the memo that was used 20 or 30 years ago. At best, it is richer in form and more relevant to the background of the times. And Google also specifically reminded, “It is best to carry a real mobile phone with you in case you need it.” In this way, is it that Google is preparing to launch a printer, and the paper phone is just preheating it?
Obviously this speculation is nonsense. In fact, no matter how you look at Google, you can’t escape the category of “behavioral art.” However, if the performance art is aside from art, the big probability is to express the idea through all the way. The idea expressed by Google this time is that users hope to let down the mobile phone and reduce its dependence. In essence, it is held with many organizations. XX days do not use mobile phones, etc. The challenges are similar.
So what is the purpose of Google’s performance art? In fact, the big probability is to match the digital health plan of the family. It is necessary to know that digital health is a new concept proposed by Google last year to help users plan the use of mobile phones reasonably and let each user control the screen usage time to solve the problem. Over-reliance on mobile phones.
Google’s digital health feature on AndroidP can show the time of using each app, allowing users to learn more about the use of mobile phones in the past day or week. At the same time, the user can also customize the usage time of the application to control the usage time. When the set upper limit is reached, the system will remind the user to stop using, and the application icon will be grayed out, which means that you should rest. .
Although according to Google’s idea, users will know how to use their mobile phones, and then adjust the usage. But after more than a year has passed, does the digital health function really work? According to the survey results of overseas relevant survey institutions, it is obviously not optimistic.Even though the user puts the phone in the “Do Not Disturb” state, reduces the number of notifications received to avoid paying too much attention to the phone, or specifies “no phone” time, shut down for a period of time to limit the use, but some respondents Indicates that after a period of inactivity, when the usage starts again, either the device usage rate increases or there is no control effect.
The reason for this is that, like the social media and games we talked about, how to capture consumers, the multi-faceted experience represented by smartphones is itself a typical “Skinner Box”, and “ The Skinner Box experiment has demonstrated that the uncertainty of rewards can lead to addiction.
If you want to say that Google will believe that only through digital health, this way of requiring users to self-control can solve mobile phone dependence, and they may not believe it. But the problem is that mobile phone addiction is largely due to Google and Apple. After all, they lead the development of Android and iOS. Faced with outside concerns and accusations, if you do nothing, it is obviously unfavorable for the corporate image. But if you really want to solve the problem, it is undoubtedly pushing the consumer out. Therefore, in this dilemma, Google can only pretend to work hard.
So when Google is doing “powerful performances” in the digital health arena, and users pretend that this is really effective, there is a paper mobile phone that is neither environmentally friendly nor scientific.