The right device at the right time can spur all kinds of revolutions. Sous vide water bath cooking was based on a laboratory immersion heaters, the WRT54g router spawned OpenWRT et al., commodity arc welders became a key part of carbon 60 research, XBox Kinect sensors got repurposed for all sorts of proximity hacks. The recent fad for particular brands of child oriented power banks in the through hiking community is the most recent one I can think of.

So therefore it’s a long shot, but this device or a device like it could be the mutation that causes a Cambrian explosion in mobile hardware, albeit one where you ahen apparently need to glue the screen on yourself, post delivery. (See the below-fold video.)

I cross every one of my fingers!

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redundantly 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The recent fad for particular brands of child oriented power banks in the through hiking community is the most recent one I can think of.

This sounds interesting. Can you elaborate?

	▲	gorgoiler 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Through a chance piece of design, the leading power pack in terms of energy density is made by / branded on behalf of Haribo, a confectionary company: https://www.ultralightnerd.com/index.php/2025/06/26/haribo-m... What’s interesting is, like the other products, it was designed and marketed for one purpose but has become very popular for another. (Although in this case it could well just be a fashion, especially given how uniquely identifiable the product is.)
	▲	sho_hn 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		It's probably a reference to the Haribo power bank thing (which appears to be poorly made and dangerous).
	▲	throwaway89201 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It doesn't fit into the list as a revolution (or even 'evolution') as it's just a high-density, compact and cheap battery [1] that turns out to be quite unsafe [2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45322135 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46071317

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nine_k 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Now it needs a 4G / 5G modem, and a camera, and it could be a compact phone,