I have often benefited from recommendations for Things I Didn't Know I Wanted.
Given that Less Wrong is a community of unusually intelligent, critical, and self-improvement-focused people, I suspect we can generate a pretty helpful thread of product recommendations — perhaps even a monthly thread of product recommendations.
Rules:
Post one product your recommend per comment, so they can be discussed and voted on independently.
Provide a link for purchasing the product.
No books, movies, TV, games, or music. (These should go in other threads, like this one or this one.)
I'll post my own recommendations to the comments section, too.
Read novels (my main use for smartphones, read 100+ by now)
Listen podcasts and audio books
Record home videos
Listen to radio (when you're curious to why the phone network is down, the electric grid has blacked out and there seem to be awfully many sirens going off outside)
Track routes and speeds of runs using GPS
Play emulated 16-bit console RPGs and strategy games that don't demand much control dexterity
Find out what constellations are currently in the sky where you point the phone
Read barcodes and QR-codes
Photograph signs and pictures and look them up with reverse image search
SSH shell connect to remote machines
Translate text (possibly OCR'd from photos) with Google Translate
Compass
Portable audio source for a home stereo system
Quickly scan book or article pages with the high-res camera
Kitchen timer
Smart alarm clock that wakes you up when you start moving around in your sleep close to your wakeup time
Spaced repetition drills on the bus
Remote control for the media center PC
Exercise timer for Tabata, HIIT etc.
USB drive, if you have a micro-USB adapter
Watch movies and TV-shows
Emulate an RPN scientific calculator
Flashlight using the camera flash LED
Share the mobile internet connection with a quick WiFi hotspot
I have often benefited from recommendations for Things I Didn't Know I Wanted.
Given that Less Wrong is a community of unusually intelligent, critical, and self-improvement-focused people, I suspect we can generate a pretty helpful thread of product recommendations — perhaps even a monthly thread of product recommendations.
Rules: