Just don't expect high-def. You can do extraordinary things inside the world of Minecraft. You can reenact the entire first "Star Wars" movie.
You can explore Stonehenge and the other wonders of Great Britain. You can step into a scale version of the World of Warcraft map. But you haven't been able to make a phone call from within the blocky game. Until now. The phone lets players make pixelated video calls and surf the Web. There's even a selfie-stick feature that lets you take a selfie and text it to a friend. The video calls are probably the coolest aspect of the project. Dial someone in and you can see them translated into blocks.
That person sees your avatar within Minecraft from the other end of the call. The Web-browsing feature isn't quite as useful, but it's still plenty entertaining. Websites are once again translated into blocks, so you're not going to get a lot of detailed reading done. Getting a cell phone to function in Minecraft took quite a bit of work.
The result is admittedly very cool. The phone may not have all the conveniences of a modern smartphone: the roughly inch display has a screen resolution of about 40 by 30 pixels, which gives it a rather lowish pixel density of around 0.
The screen also doesn't seem to support multi- or even mono-touch either. That large display also means the phone is several stories tall — it falls into the larger side of the phablet spectrum and probably won't fit into your skinny jeans. Still, it includes a fully-functional web browser the low resolution of the display does have a slight negative impact on its usability and is even able to make two-way video calls to actual phones in our real, non-blocky world.
On the upside, mobile coverage is universally available — just plant a cell tower sapling and the game's virtual engineers will come build one for you free of charge. The phone also appears to have one of the longest battery lives we've seen on any device, with at least several billion years of screen-on time before the juice runs out. The project is available on github for anyone who wants to learn more, and although Verizon doesn't offer any way to try out the new phone, it does provide some instructions on how to build one youself.
Martim is more of a numbers guy. He likes biking. He goes rock climbing to overcome his fear of heights. He is also the former world-record holder for youngest man alive. To get in touch via email, please feel free to reach me at martim [at] androidpolice.
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