Three futuristic mobile apps you can use now
“Cutting-edge tools that feel like they belong in a lab rather than our back pockets.”
These days, there is an app for everything — from monitoring your sleep patterns to understanding the constellations. Our dependence on apps in our day-to-day lives has resulted in a lot of weird and sometimes totally pointless apps, but it has also produced some incredibly cutting-edge tools that feel like they belong in a lab rather than our back pockets.
Here are three of our favourite futuristic apps that are changing the capabilities of our mobile phones.
Digital Key by Hyundai
The Digital Key app by Hyundai means you’ll never have to worry about losing your car keys again. This cutting-edge new mobile app connects your car with your smartphone, transforming your phone into car keys and enabling you to unlock your vehicle with your device.
And that’s not all — the Digital Key app can be tailored for up to four authorised users, adjusting the vehicle depending on which individual is driving. The mirrors, seats and steering wheel will all change automatically when unlocked by a specific device, leaving you to sit back and relax while your car reshapes itself to suit your driving habits.
In addition, there is also a setting that lets you start the engine, lock and unlock the car and activate the alarm remotely. In short — you can control an entire vehicle at the swipe of a screen.
Google Nest
We’re all becoming more familiar with the concept of smart homes, but the Nest mobile app from Google brings to light just how far we’ve come, and how connected we can be to our own homes.
The Nest app lets you control your home temperature and alarm system remotely from your smartphone and using Nest Cam — an innovative home surveillance system — you can view everything that’s going on in your household 24-hours a day.
The app also runs a high-tech alert system that notifies you when you are using too much energy, the alarm is triggered, or if there is ‘general activity’ (eg. Visitors). All very helpful if you require some peace of mind from afar — just don’t lie about eating that last piece of cake. You’re on camera…
My Truphone
Well, we would say this, wouldn’t we? But the My Truphone app is changing the way people connect when they’re travelling abroad. Most of us are still using local SIM cards at the airport or buying expensive and restrictive add-ons from our current operator — a routine we tend to stick with even when we’re not getting the best deals and services. The eSIM changes all that. It’s the SIM card, but without the card — it’s digital. And you can have as many as you want on one device.
My Truphone allows you to download a Truphone eSIM profile to an eSIM-enabled smartphone, like the latest iPhone series and the Google Pixel 3.
Once you’ve downloaded your eSIM, you can then choose between Truphone’s local or regional data plans, depending on where you’re travelling to — as well as a global plan which works across 80 countries. So, there you go, some shameless self-promotion — but for good reason.
