The Superhero in your pocket

“Today our smartphones are super helpful sidekicks, but someday soon they may even be superheroes themselves.”- A casual comment this morning from a fellow Defender team member incited an interesting question: Are our smartphones really phones anymore or are they becoming superheroes?

Twenty+ years ago, we were all in awe that Zack Morris’s snazzy Motorola DynaTAC could make a call from anywhere. Fast-forward to 2014 and our so-called ‘phones’ have become arguably our most versatile tool. For the younger generation, making a call is the least important function their phones perform.

We have pushed past practical utility like GPS, mobile hotspots, and integrated HD video into a new realm. Today we can use our smartphones for projects that save the rainforest by combining a smartphone with a solar panel and a speaker that listens for the sounds of poacher’s chainsaws. Even glasses have stepped from the mundane into the ever-growing Internet of things with Google glass. It is hard to fathom, but there will be 6 billion Internet connected devices manufactured this year. By 2020, there will be a thriving ecosystem of 24 billion Internet connected devices. And that’s for the almost 8 billion people that will be on earth.

The advancements in smart phone technology have created opportunities for hardware startups like ours to extend the capabilities of smart phones. It’s not so much the smart phone that is the superhero, but the connected devices that can give it super powers. Some devices are one-trick superheroes (no offense smart egg tray) and some superhero powers make you scratch your head. We think the Defender has a few super powers of its own: photographic memory, painful pepper venom, blinding light, extreme sound, and telepathy. Ok it’s not  telepathy, its just Bluetooth, but we have REALLY LONG RANGE Bluetooth.

The best superpower we have is confidence! And that’s what we think about when we imagine our first Defenders being used; customers feeling confident and empowered because they are connected and protected through their Defenders. Maybe our phones themselves are not the superheroes, but perhaps they are empowering us to be the heroes ourselves. We need to get back to work; coding our superpowers and joining forces with other superhero things.

What superpower does your phone give you? Tell us on facebook.

Have a heroic day!