I made a list like this about 7 years ago. Today I wondered: What's changed?
A lot less is honestly impressive now, so I've rearranged the entries, and added some new stuff (the items in green).
Totally unsurprising:
- Call people on the phone.
- Keep an address book that is synchronized online.
- Keep appointments with a calendar that is synchronized online.
- Set alarms and timers, including vibrating alarms.
- Do basic math.
- Type and sync unformatted notes.
- Send and receive emails, text messages, instant-messages, twitter alerts, et cetera.
- Record, play back, and sync voice memos.
- Use as a portable hard-drive (Air-Sharing, FileMagnet).
- Estimate currency conversions using up-to-date ratios (Currency).
- Take photos with GPS tags embedded, and post them online or send them to people immediately.
- Make international telephone calls at a discount (Skype, etc).
- Get local and remote weather forecasts.
- Watch movies in a tiny screen (Netflix).
- Purchase and read e-books and music.
- Pair with a physical keyboard for easier data-entry.
- Subscribe to video/audio podcasts, play them, and download current episodes.
- Scrawl pictures with my finger and save them (Scribble).
- Download and install enhancements to the device (App Store).
- Record a track of my physical location, and play it back later.
- Remotely view and crudely interact with the screen of my desktop or laptop (VNC, WinAdmin)
- Search on a map for services of all kinds, and call them up on the phone with one button.
- See a view of my living room, from a wifi camera attached to the wall, in real time, from across the country.
- Take a picture of a document and have it automatically read all the text on the document and turn it into a PDF.
Somewhat impressive or surprising:
- Mark areas of poor signal coverage and automatically report them to my provider.
- Connect to a television and present movie and slide shows.
- Calculate resistor color codes (OhmEE, ResistorCC).
- Record and do minor edits to a video, then place it online or send it to someone immediately.
- View and manage my bank accounts fairly recurely
- Locate the nearest movie theaters, see their schedules, and book tickets (Fandango, Flixster).
- Lose all my money in the stock market (E*TRADE Mobile Pro).
- Listen to a continuous mix of new music that the device thinks I will like, based on an ongoing analysis of my selections (Pandora)
- Wirelessly control nearby lighting fixtures, dimmers, and consoles (Luminair (DMX lighting control)).
- Display a number pad, and pair it with a nearby computer keyboard that lacks a number pad (NumberKey).
- Spot tornadoes and get advance warnings with weather graphs (Radar Scope).
- Browse my home music collection on it and play music through speakers in different rooms of my house (Remote with an AirPort Express).
- Track plane flight status, with real-time departure info, gate delays, and flight locations (FlightTrack, Live Flight Tracker).
- Attach a thumb-sized credit card reader and conduct business transactions (Square).
- Have a two-way video chat with someone in another country.
- Get a map, satellite view, or street view, all over the world, see my present location, and calculate walking or driving directions.
- Ask basic math questions out loud, and get the answer spoken back to me, e.g. "What's the square root of 1207?" "The answer is approximately 34.7419."
- Automatically grab photos and videos from my Canon DSLR camera, as I take them, and perform a variety of scripted actions on them. (ShutterSnitch)
- Poke a button in my chat history with a person, and see their exact location (assuming they're with their phone) on a map, accurate to within the last 5 seconds.
- Learn a new language 15 minutes at a time, on an app that speaks the language back to me.
- Attach a cardboard sleeve to the phone, with a pair of lenses in it, turning it into a 3D VR headset that can play back videos I record with my 360-degree handheld recorder.
- Track packages and get a notification seconds after they're placed on my doorstep.
- Automatically gather stats on my car's fuel efficiency, diagnose check engine light problems, and compile maps and mileage info on all my car trips. (Automatic)
Impressive or surprising:
- Mine a database of real-estate listings, including purchase and tax histories. (ZipRealty).
- Search for and then book international flights and hotels across multiple airlines (KAYAK HD).
- Carry and use a reference for how to recognize various animal tracks (MyNature Animal Tracks).
- Carry and use a reference for how to tie various knots, with video and written tutorials (Knot Guide).
- Scan barcodes of almost any product, accessing a worldwide database of products to both identify the item scanned and provide comparative pricing and locating (RedLaser).
- Control the presentation of slideshows (Keynote Remote).
- Tune my guitar (Guitar Toolkit, OmniTuner, TyroTuner).
- Record my voice as I sing along to music, measure my accuracy, and apply automatic pitch correction and harmony (Glee Karaoke).
- Measure the level and slope of flat objects and sides (Clinometer).
- Make a surprisingly accurate guess at the title of whatever music is playing in the environment (Shazam).
- Strum a mathematically emulated guitar (Twang).
- Mine and cache a real-time database of plane preflight information, including icing forecasts, wind mappings, radar and satellite images, flight rule and terminal procedure listings, approach plates, VFR and IFR charts, etc (ForeFlight).
- Act as a crude and uncalibrated seismometer (Seismometer).
- Hold the phone up to the sky and get a map of what constellations should be visible in that direction (Starmap, Star Walk).
- Remotely lock, unlock, and start my automobile (Viper Remote Start System, Mercedes-Benz mbrace).
- Record the amount of tossing and turning done in bed, and use the data to time a wakeup alarm to avoid REM sleep (Sleep Cycle).
- Automatically report back to the public works department when I hit a pothole in the road, so the accumulated data can be used to dispatch repairs (Street Bump).
- Get an automatic announcement about which lane I need to move to as I approach an interchange on the freeway.
- Shoot video that is processed to look like an ink sketch on paper, in real-time, at 60 frames a second.
- Secure my phone with my fingerprint, scanned fast enough that it unlocks the phone in less than a quarter of a second.
- Have my photos automatically organized by who's in each one ... including photos of my cat.
- Attach it to a wireless controller, and fly a drone with it, showing and recording its location and everything it sees. (DJI Go 4)
- Hold it up to a sign written in a foreign language, and have the translation appear in the picture as though it's written on the sign. (Translate)
- Rent a bicycle from a kiosk downtown. (Zagster)
Very impressive or surprising:
- Locate and reserve a nearby rental car, and when you get to it, unlock it (Zipcar).
- Explore 3D recreations of large cities around the world, at 60 frames a second, so detailed that I can see into the windows of my own car parked on the street.
- Summon a person to my door, driving their own car, who will then take me to my destination for less than a taxi would charge. (lyft)
- Secure my phone with a 3D scan of my own face, more accurate than using my fingerprint, validated in less than half a second.
- Speak to the phone in English, and have it translate my sentence into Mandarin and speak it back to me, after less than a second of delay.
What do you think, fellow modern people? Are there any items here I've forgotten about? Any new developments?