10 Surprising Things You Can Do With Your Phone That Most People Don't Know About


We are living in an age where many people seldom go anywhere without taking their cell phone with them. They have become so integrated in our daily lives that it seems like it would be hard to get along without them. In addition to making phone calls, texting, taking pictures, surfing the web or playing games, mobile phones have many other uses as well. An amazing array of apps allow a phone to be much more than a communications device or camera. There is a lot of fluff out there among apps, but there are also amazingly useful apps that allow you to do things with your phone that you never thought possible.



1. GUITAR TUNING

There was a time when electronic tuning devices for guitars and other stringed instruments were prohibitively expensive. These days, all you need to do is download the right app for your phone and you can enjoy pitch-perfect tuning assistance, as well as other features like chord identification and instruction.

2. BABY MONITOR

These clever apps will allow you to place your phone in your baby’s room where the app will watch a sleeping baby for movement and listen for sounds. If sound or movement is detected, the app can dial a phone number and alert the user that their baby is awake

3. SPEEDOMETER

A number of GPS apps are able to measure your speed very accurately as you travel in your car. They are often programmed to be aware of the speed limit in many areas and can alert you if you exceed that limit. This can be incredibly useful if the speedometer in your car is broken or inaccurate.

4. HAND WARMER

Believe it or not, there are apps that you can use to warm your hands! These apps will work the processors in your phone in order to warm them up, allowing you to defrost your frozen fingers on a cold winter day. Be warned that these apps will rapidly use up the battery, so you have to weigh the benefit of warm hands against the potential inconvenience of a depleted battery.

5. BARCODE SCANNER

A number apps are able to decipher bar codes on various products as well as those square ink-blot-like “QR” codes that often show up in magazines and posters. Depending on the app, you can access a lot of information about a product simply by scanning its barcode.

6. BLOOD ALCOHOL CALCULATOR

Although it might not be the best idea to put all your faith in an app like this, it still can be useful to help you get an idea whether or not you have too much alcohol in your system to drive. The app makes judgments based on the drinks you have consumed and then calculates how long it is before you should be able to safely drive again.

7. SPEED TRAPS

These types of apps are very dependent on a number of participating users in order for them to be of any use. Users are able to report the locations of speed traps they see in a given area, which makes that information available to other users in that area. Using GPS, it will automatically alert the user if they are approaching an area where a speed trap has been reported.

8. TV REMOTE CONTROL

Who hasn’t misplaced the remote control for their TV or DVR once in a while? Some apps area able to turn your phone into a remote control you can use to control a number of electronic devices.

9. SMART CAR

There are now apps on the market that will allow you to use your phone to control certain functions of your car, making it possible to do things like unlock your car, arm or disarm your car alarm, open the trunk or even start the car remotely! Obviously, your car needs to be equipped with the wireless features that make this all possible which is probably the case for most cars made within the last few years.

10. METAL DETECTOR

This app only works with iPhones and iPads and might be a cool app to play around with to see how well it works just for fun. It uses the phone’s (or tablet’s) integrated magnetometer to detect metal objects.