5 More Uses of Phone Cameras

Thanks to the advent of technology, and mankind's apparent desire to record the shit out of everything for the next generation to ignore, we now have cameras in about every phone and the ability to store more stills than an average cinema reel. You'd think something that powerful would have really useful purposes, but right now, it's pretty much a social tool, mainly for sharing moments both public and intimate (read: scandalous)

I'd beg to differ, however. Apart from taking pictures of half-drunk friends, my chiseled, glistening half-naked body in the bathroom, and pretty much every sunset-bathed skyline in existence, here are five more uses of the phone camera that I've experienced thus far:

1. Ordering food where there is a language barrier - So you're craving to eat something you saw either on display or on somebody else' table, but you're in a country where English seems to have been outlawed five decades ago. The menu is posted where you can't pinpoint what you want without looking like a 3yo wanting his 'mamam'. That's a problem. You could drag the order taker to where you saw the food you want, or you can just snap a picture discretely and just show them what you want.

2. Recording details of a traffic mishap for insurance purposes - Let's be practical here. Accidents happen. Unfortunately for the lot of us, Insurance Companies have this policy of pretending like the term "accident" has not yet been invented until the very moment you claim it happened. They want proof. Usually in the form of a police report, which usually comes from police, which if you live where I do, are as rare as honest government workers. To make it worse, if you move your car from the scene of the incident, the police refuse to do the report, causing you to block the road until they confirm the incident. All the while, you earn the wrath of pretty much every car within the next two kilometers on both directions. So snap a picture instead. Or even better, take a video of it, like you're documenting some rare breaking news. Then move the goddamn car because the only thing worse than a bent fender is getting shot by a road-raging driver because if your bent fender.

3. Taking down blackboard/whiteboard notes - Gone are the days where you have to jot down everything like a chippy idiot in your notebook when you know you'll only be using that information for about 20 minutes many days later. Snap a picture instead. You'll save on paper, ink, and precious time you could spend doing other, more important things - like writing down articles about using camera phones to take notes down.

4. Recording taxi details in an instant - Capture the taxi name, plate number, phone number, and model in an instant, ensuring you can track your women friend's last ride in case shit without having to have them wait until you are able to jot the information down. Like a goddamn BOSS.

5. Remembering obscure places - Let's face it. While Google Maps is awesome, it ain't the one solution to all your locational problems. A small nameless tiangge where you bought your shady bootleg copy of Bang Brothers is probably in a sea of other tiangges inside a mall is not suppored by Google Maps. Solution? Take a picture of the place with the surroundings as reference. That way, when episode 5: Curvaceous Carla turns out to be a dud, you can always go back and swap it with some other sad variation of american pornography without problems.