2000: xkcd Phone 2000

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xkcd Phone 2000

Title text: Our retina display features hundreds of pixels per inch in the central fovea region.

Explanation

This is the seventh 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 1889: xkcd Phone 6 was released 8 and a half months before this one, which is so far the last on the series.

This time a nonconsecutive version number is used to match the milestone comic number 2000.

List of features (clockwise from top-center):

• Dockless: It was common practice for older standard cellphones (i.e. non-smartphones) to use a docking station for charging. "Dockless" could be a catchy marketing term for wireless charging, or it could simply mean wired charging without a dock.
• Silent: Most mobile phones have a "Silent" mode in which all ringing and vibration is muted, so the user can receive messages and missed-call notifications in a place that requires silence. This xkcd Phone feature may be a "Silent" mode button, but perhaps the phone is silent all the time and unable to produce sound at all. While most people these days use their smartphones for functions that do not require sound, a completely silent phone would not fit the traditional definition of a "phone". This feature is labelled at the location where a headphone socket would traditionally be, although some recent phones have discarded the traditional headphone jack in place of wireless headphones.
• Quad camera takes four copies of every picture: Recent phones have added up to three rear-facing cameras, offering different fields of view, monochrome cameras for low light, and a wider base for emulating depth of field effects. At the time of writing no phone on the market has four rear-facing cameras. However, YouTube personality nigahiga created a parody of the iPhone (iFhone 8) that has four cameras structured similarly, e.g. taking a picture of a letter K gives 4K. An alternative interpretation is that the cameras take four identical pictures simultaneously, which would use up storage space at 4 times the rate of a standard camera while providing no advantage.
• Front-facing camera obscura: A camera obscura is a dark room or box with a small hole allowing light to enter. The size of the hole causes light travelling in straight lines to project a dim inverted image on the back of the room or box; the concept is the predecessor to a modern camera, which uses a lens to allow more light to enter. A camera obscura is not strictly speaking a camera as in an image capture device (although there are pin-hole cameras which use the same mechanism). Actual phones have front-facing conventional cameras, allowing selfies, video calling, etc.
• 3D facial contour analysis shows you a realistic preview of your death mask: Recent computational photography effects implemented on mobile phones support facial analysis, allowing for artificial relighting or the creation of avatars. However, since a death mask is created to look just like the deceased's face, all cameras provide this "feature" automatically.
• Sponsored pixels: Presumably this means that parts of the screen (pixels) can be bought in a sponsoring deal. If enough pixels are sold, your screen would be rendered unusable. It is common for advertisers to buy part of the screen real-estate on a service web site (in fact, The Million Dollar Homepage hosted nothing but a 1000x1000 pixel grid of advertisements), and "images" the size of individual pixels can be used to track site access without being intrusive to the user. For the xkcd Phone 2000, it appears that advertisers have access to part of the screen (worryingly, right in the middle). Slightly less intrusive approaches have been used in bookstores selling customised versions of the Kindle, for example, and it is common for cell phone networks to insist on network-specific software to be installed on a phone.
• Front and rear pop-out grips: There are accessories that stick to the rear of a phone and can be "popped out", offering a grip, a stand, or somewhere to store headphone cables. Integrating such a feature into the phone design is novel, although some phones have incorporated kick stands. Pop-out grips are normally placed on the back of the phone to make it easier to hold with one hand. Having a second grip to the front of the phone does nothing except block part of the screen. There could be a small screen on the top of the grip since the grip is shown to contain "Sponsored Pixels".
• Humidity-controlled crisper: A crisper is a drawer in a refrigerator meant to control the humidity to keep vegetables from drying out and getting limp. Obviously, a smartphone would have no need for a crisper^{[citation needed]}.
• Antikythera mechanism: The antikythera mechanism is an ancient Greek clockwork device for predicting astronomical positions. It is one of the earliest known analogue computers. While impressive for its time, by now it is obsolete by millennia.
• New York Times partnership: all photos taken with camera app are captioned in real time by reporter Maggie Haberman: Modern phones can use machine learning techniques (usually in the cloud) to identify and tag camera content - this makes it possible to search, for example, for photos containing a particular person or subject without requiring user input. Cellphone photos are often used in contributions to social media with some form of user-provided caption. This phone appears to combine the two, using Maggie Haberman to provide automatic captions for photos taken by the phone's owner (although whether this is explicitly for social media use or internal to the phone is unclear).
• Spit valve: A water key, or "spit valve," is a feature on most brass and some woodwind instruments used to empty the instrument of condensation caused by the musician's breath (and not, as is commonly thought, saliva). Of course, one wouldn't think condensation would form on the inside of a smartphone^{[citation needed]}.
• Standard USB connector: a USB A port is displayed. Unfortunately, a "standard" USB connector, according to the USB standard, would be a USB B port as a phone typically acts as the "slave" device, rather than the "host" as a USB A port would imply. However, in recent updates to the USB standard, bi-communication between 2 A ports is supported
• Coin purse-style squeeze access: presumably, the casing is flexible in this region, and when squeezed at the sides (a bad idea, considering the next design item) reveals the USB A port and spit valve.
• Hollow-ground: a hollow grind is a type of knife (or similar sharp tool) edge noted for sharpness and general fragility, often seen in razors. This seems to imply that the phone is exceedingly smooth, which would make it difficult to hold^{[citation needed]}.
• Absorbent: Many modern phones are designed to be waterproof, to avoid accidents and allow use in the rain. It's also common to have some form of oleophobic coating on the screen to reduce smearing as fingers are used on the touchscreen. This phone seems to have the reverse feature, and be explicitly designed to absorb things (presumably liquids--perhaps that's why it needs a spit valve). "Absorbent" is more commonly a property touted by the packaging of paper towels.
• Keyboard supports dynamic typing: Dynamic typing is a computer programming concept, and has nothing to do with typing on a keyboard.
• Backflow preventer: A backflow prevention device is a mechanism that avoids the possibility of liquid (usually water) travelling in the opposite direction from the normal intent if the expected pressure is inverted. Since there is not normally any liquid flowing through a phone (unless in this case relating to the spit valve), this would not normally be a useful feature. However, some smart phones do contain pressure measuring devices such as barometers (which can also be used in some cases to detect the phone being squeezed), so maybe this phone is intended to be resilient to such conditions.
• Swiss Army partnership: folding knife (unlocks only if Switzerland is invaded): A Swiss Army knife is a folding knife, traditionally with many secondary "blades" for multiple uses such as can openers and files. Usually it is a generic term for that style of knife, but the knife in this phone surprisingly really has a connection with the army of Switzerland. Switzerland is known for remaining neutral (and not being invaded) in both of the World Wars of the 20th century despite war raging across surrounding countries, suggesting that it is unlikely that the knife would ever be unlocked. While such a feature on a phone (or phone case) may be useful, it is likely to be a safety concern, and a threat to convenience when security checkpoints such as airports start confiscating the phone when they notice it conceals a knife blade. What's more, a phone does not provide the ideal grip for a knife blade - especially if force is to be applied to it. This may also reference the Swiss military practice of soldiers keeping military rifles in their private homes but only being given ammunition in the event the army is mobilized.
• 100% BPA-free PCB construction: Bisphenol A (BPA) is a chemical used in plastics such as waterbottles. Recent studies show that BPA can leach estrogen-like compounds into liquids, so BPA-free water bottles have become popular. PCB probably refers to a printed circuit board, which is made of resin-bonded fiberglass, not plastic, and which contains the electrical components that control most modern electronic devices such as phones. It may also refer to Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs), a category of persistent organic pollutants which are not used very much any more; it would be far worse than BPA for anyone concerned with the issue.
• AMOLCD display (7-segment): AMOLED is a display technology often used in cell phones, providing thin and emissive displays. LCD is another display technology used in phones, and works by blocking light from a separate backlight. A 7-segment display is a device made of seven independently-controlled segments (usually either LCD or LED) which can be used to display a single digit; as such the technology is common in traditional digital watches. In contrast most phone displays are made of a uniform high-resolution pixel grid that allows arbitrary content to be displayed, although some very old (pre-smart) cellphones and land lines did use this technology in displaying a phone number, like the MotoFONE F3. The technology cannot represent the entire alphabet without modification, so it is inappropriate for text messages, let alone graphics.
• Runs on battery for the first 6 hours, then uses gasoline: A nod to the increased popularity of gas-electric hybrid vehicles. This would be a fantastic breakthrough for fuel cells. There have been many attempts to create a highly portable fuel cell that can be used to power phones. Although having to use gasoline instead of a USB cord would likely cause more problems for the average consumer a fuel cell does have some notable advantages over a standard lithium-ion battery. When comparing a fuel cell to a battery of equal size the fuel cell will be capable of powering an object for far longer than the battery. This includes lithium-ion batteries which are commonly used for powering phones and are typically the majority of its mass. This would mean one could shrink the size of the battery substantially yet still be able to provide the same amount of power. The smaller battery can be kept as is in order to reduce the weight of the phone or can free up space for more features to be installed into the phone. This might simply be the first xkcd phone that mentions that it does this. Provides a possible explanation to how the manufacturer of the phone is capable of fitting so many unusual features into the phone to begin with. Another advantage of a fuel cell powered phone is that it is independent from a working power grid (useful for disaster situations where thousands of people would no longer be capable of staying in contact with others or people who are stranded and alone) and there is no need for a bulky generator to convert the gasoline into electricity first. This is not the first time Randall has talked about this before, with much of the information here coming from what-if #128: Zippo Phone.
• Sharpie® dual stylus (dry-erase + permanent) Sharpie® is a brand most associated with a line of markers. While a stylus is generally a pen-like object that doesn't create markings, but instead allows finer input on a touch screen, "Dry-Erase + Permanent" implies that these are in fact markers. These would allow the user to write on the screen, but as this wouldn't allow any form on input to the phone, it would only serve as a very expensive pseudo-whiteboard. Even if they were actually styluses, having two would be of little use. Note that permanent was previously spelled "permenant", incorrectly. This was later corrected; See #Trivia
• Mouse cursor: A feature of BlackBerry smartphones which has gone out of favor due to the popularity of touch screens. However, Android devices, at least, still support Bluetooth HID access, and on some devices it is possible to pair the device with a mouse (and keyboard) and access the screen through a mouse pointer. These peripherals may also be attached with USB On-The-Go. This can be particularly useful if the device is exporting its display to a large external screen - and some manufacturers have provided tethering systems based around pairing a phone with a mouse.

The tagline for the phone says that the marketing team hopes that 2000 still sounds like a futuristic number. It was common for a time to have futuristic science-fiction take place on or around the year 2000 (e.g. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Knight Rider 2000, Death Race 2000, Space: 1999), and many devices marketed in the late 20th century had a "2000" as part of their product name in order to sound futuristic. However, since the year 2000 was 18 years ago at the time of this comic's publication, this is no longer the case. The number 2000 also represents the fact that this is the 2000th xkcd comic.

The nonsensical trademarking of xkcd Phone slogans has become even more pronounced: as well as the inapplicable-as-ever copyright symbol, the slogan is listed three times as a registered trademark and twice as an unregistered one – and the second of those trademark signs is itself trademarked.

The title text refers to Retina Display, a term used to describe Apple products with higher pixel densities. The xkcd Phone marketing team would be unable to use the term due to Apple's having registered it as a trademark. Additionally, the central fovea region is a portion of your eye's retina containing the most densely packed photosensitive neurons (confusing the biological retina with the electronics display of the same name). Foveated rendering is a genuine computer graphics technique intended to increase performance by rendering with higher quality to the regions of the display where the user is looking, and lower quality at the edges of vision; it is expected to be useful for virtual reality (one of the uses for cell phones) as a way to deal with the required high pixel densities while managing power consumption. There are displays with variable density, in specialist uses, but such a feature is not practical in a phone because the whole area of the display is typically useful and needs to provide high resolution (as the user's eye moves across it).

Transcript

[The comic depicts a smartphone showing many uncommon features. The front view shows a mouse cursor and a circle in the middle. The side view reveals the circle as something like an old photo lens from 1900 extending far above the surface and four large buttons (camera lenses) at the rear. The third view is from the top and just mentions a "hollow ground." The bottom view looks like as it was opened by a can opener and shows a big USB connector and on the right a small black connection.]

Dockless

Silent

Quad camera takes four copies of every picture

Front-facing camera obscura

3D facial contour analysis shows you a realistic preview of your death mask

Sponsored pixels

Front and rear pop-out grips

Humidity-controlled crisper

Antikythera mechanism

New York Times partnership: all photos taken with camera app are captioned in real time by reporter Maggie Haberman

Spit valve

Standard USB connector

Coin purse-style squeeze access

Hollow-ground

Absorbent

Keyboard supports dynamic typing

Backflow preventer

Swiss Army partnership: folding knife (unlocks only if Switzerland is invaded)

100% BPA-free PCB construction

AMOLCD display (7-segment)

Runs on battery for the first 6 hours, then uses gasoline

Sharpie® dual stylus (dry-erase + permanent)

Mouse cursor

Introducing

The xkcd Phone 2000

We're still hoping this sounds like a futuristic number®®™®©™^®

Trivia

The stylus was previously called 'permenant'. This was later corrected, to permanent. You can still see the original image here

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Discussion

Huh, it's not a milestone comic like 1000 was. 172.68.58.191 16:16, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm slightly disappointed honestly 172.68.54.46 16:22, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Gotta wait for an actual round number, like 0b100000000000 162.158.111.127 16:38, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Well it is the phone 2000 and he does mention in passing asking if 2000 is a good number to choose Zachweix (talk) 16:39, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

What am I waiting for more: 2018 or 2048? SilverMagpie (talk) 16:53, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Waiting for 2018 personally. A comic that has looked at the calendar so many times should be able to see the comic number match the year. Lukeskylicker (talk) 17:36, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

I think it is pretty clearly a milestone comic. Previous xkcd Phones were timed near iPhone releases. This is very specifically for the 2000th comic. I think it no coincidence that the xkcd Phone 2000 was released for the 2000th one, and think it should be mentioned. 162.158.63.28 18:04, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

I was disappointed, was expecting a 1000-style comic. JayPlaysBeamNG (talk) 19:43, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

That's just the exact same thing as 1000, which IMHO I don't really want. 172.68.46.41 20:08, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

It might be worth noting, that mouse cursors were a thing on BlackBerry smartphones. 162.158.202.100 17:00, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Those had the weird double-screens, where you could lightly drag your finger around and the cursor would follow, and if you pushed hard it would click. Most people found it to be annoying at best, IIRC. 162.158.74.165 18:38, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

They actually still work on Android if you pair a mouse with the phone (at least, last I tried it). This was actually annoying - my Apple Magic Mouse prefers to pair to my Android Phone than to my Macbook Pro! Fluppeteer (talk) 17:59, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

I would buy it just to be able to plug a keyboard into the type A port. I hate the USB host-peripheral thing... My phone is more than capable of handling external devices. Linker (talk)

Don't you like USB OTG or type C adaptors? Bluetooth keyboards should actually work with many Android (or Windows Mobile) devices. Fluppeteer (talk) 17:59, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Most Android phones accept keyboard/mouse/pendrive/whatever standard USB peripheral through its USB, some are able to power them, for others you need to provide an external power source. For my old Moto Droid 4, I connected OTG adapter to a USB hub and there one self-made male-male cable for power and rest for peripherals :) As soon as you connect a mouse, the pointer appears. 172.68.215.103 07:56, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

The issue is you need the adapter. I hope to get an OTG adapter someday, but it is just annoying to have to carry an adapter around (Thank goodness I still have a headphone jack...)I am really hoping type C just cleans up the mess, considering a lot of phones have more power than some old desktops... it just bugs me. 'Course, it would probably not be a priority for the OEM's because 99% won't care. Linker (talk) 15:45, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

I think PCB refers to Printed Circuit Board which I assume naturally doesn't contain BPA. 172.68.174.28 18:54, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

I edited the explanation to include Printed Circuit Board. I didn't go as far as to remove the alternate explanation, but I think you are correct Itijara (talk) 19:57, 30 May 2018 (UTC) Itijara

The charging area looks an awful lot like the suggestive violin plots of 1967:_Violin_Plots 162.158.186.42 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Is that even a "standard" USB port? it looks like it has one too many pins to me, although i guess maybe it could be a 3.0 port. 172.69.68.219 21:58, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Title text - Our retina display features hundreds of pixels per inch in the central fovea region.

There is so much language in this and a big error not covered here:

• Our isn't them, it's us! We all (mostly) have two eyes and the retina collects visual information in pixels.
• But hundreds of pixels is far too low. The Wiki article Fovea centralis tells me "50 per 100 micrometres in the most central fovea". This is approximately 12,700 per inch. This would lead to roughly 162 GigaPixels.
• And then the human eye isn't large as an inch, and the "most central fovea" is much smaller. Maybe Randall will correct the "hundreds of pixels per inch"...

Nevertheless the word retina is focusing on people who know the Apple Retina Display but don't know where it comes from. --Dgbrt (talk) 22:06, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

• "Our" means this is a promotional page created by the company that made the phone, so it's "our phone" as in "the phone this company made and is now promoting". It's normal English use, there's no comment to be made.
• Hundreds of pixels being far too low is one of the jokes in the comic, that they're bragging about a number that is not only unimpressive, but would be embarrassing.
• Therefore Randall won't be correcting it, it's an intentional joke. NiceGuy1 (talk) 05:12, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

No comment on "®®™®©™®"?? 162.158.74.147 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I honestly hope comic 2001 has a reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey. 162.158.74.135 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Why Maggie Haberman? Is it just because of her prolific Twitter usage? I'm not aware how that relates to captioning photos, am I missing a reference? -- JohnHawkinson (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I have a theory: the Golden Age SF writer "Cordwainer Smith" (Professor Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger), in one of his earliest stories, had people undergo the Haberman process to enable them to survive the weird space-induced pain of his Instrumentality of Mankind universe. OK, really I doubt that had anything to do with it, but I did think of that when I saw the reporter's name. Nitpicking (talk) 23:41, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

If comic #404 wasn't counted due to Comic Not Found, it means that this comic is not really #2000, but rather #1999. Probably on Wednesday it will be truly comic #2000. -- Xkcdreader52 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Could "keyboard supports dynamic typing" actually refer to the fact that the keyboard can be used to write different words, and not in fact be locked into writing the same sentence over and over again... A sensible but clearly not marketing material point 141.101.99.197 21:59, 31 May 2018 (UTC)Sedontane

I interpreted the death mask thing to mean that the phone would edit a picture of you to resemble what you will look like when you die, which would resemble your present state more or less closely depending on how and when that happens. 172.68.58.131 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

There are two Unicode characters for the letters C and R in circles. The enclosed C and enclosed R characters are neither superscript or subscript. and registered trademark (® ®) and copyright (© ©) are smaller and often superscript. The copyright symbol should be used in place of enclosed C and the registered trademark symbol should be used instead of enclosed R. All registered trademarks are trademarks. Not all trademarks are registered copyrights. Therefore, the two symbols should not be used together. You should have only one of the symbols (® ™ ©) and it should appear immediately after the item it refers to. Items can have copyrights, trademarks, and service marks, but not a combination. Dictionary words, such as "number" can't be copyrighted. It might be possible to apply for a trademark or service mark, but you would have a hard time defending it in court. BradleyRoss (talk) 16:14, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

When i read the camera obscura bit i was thinking of the camera from Fatal Frame which allows its user to see/fight off ghosts. That makes more sense to me than the explanation here which is more of a projector than camera. 162.158.92.238 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

No, it'sn't a futuristic name anymore. I already wander in time, last time I was in the 2060s and the 2080s. And for me, "'90s" mean the 2090s.162.158.88.26 12:09, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Regarding the swiss army knife, I think this may be a reference to the fact that the swiss army knife is a multitool, and a smartphone is sort of a digital multitool, so they kind-of go together

JavaScript is dynamically typed, and JSFuck is a subset of javascript, so a keyboard with support for dynamic typing could theoretically have only 6 characters

Some guy wrote that the next comic in the xkcd phone series came out five months later. He/She was off by two years. R3TRI8UTI0N (talk) 13:19, 7 April 2023 (UTC)