- The Swype is a Bluetooth-enabled touchscreen vape that can mirror your phone's screen.
- Finally, there's a way to vape while still getting your Instagram notifications!
- The future is here: Watermelon Ice Cream.
I believe in progress. I'm optimistic about technology. I believe that technology can improve our lives, unlock human potential and solve big problems.
So, at first, I thought I would like an e-cigarette that also had a phone function. But I was wrong.
I first heard about the Swype vape when a few photoshopped images of its screen were making the rounds on social media. (Sadly, you can't see Zillow.) The vape also popped up on Reddit's r/dumbphone discussion board, a space for people looking to escape the addictive glow of their smartphone screens.
I don't smoke e-cigarettes morning I'm heavily dependent on my phone. Maybe I'll replace one vice with another, or maybe I'll focus on both, or maybe I'll do something else. I'm not really sure what my plans were, other than I absolutely needed this device, but I immediately ordered one from a site called General Vape.
Now, the obvious disclaimer: Business Insider is not encouraging people to use or start using e-cigarettes just because having one on your phone sounds fun.
The Swype Vape is a nicotine vape (not weed, just to be clear) that comes in a variety of flavors, including Blue Raspberry, Gum Mint, Piña Colada, Pink Burst, and “Fucking Fab” (sadly sold out). I chose the Watermelon Ice. (Samatha Cole from 404 Media also tried the Swype Vape, which wasn't planned; by coincidence, we both chose the same flavor.)
The e-cigarettes cost about $20, are pre-filled, and are disposable, one-time use. Yes, disposable.
Swype connects to your phone using Bluetooth
The Swype certainly feels like you get what you pay for – a $20 disposable phone that doubles as an e-cigarette – and while it does have some very wonky moments that you've probably never seen in an electronic device these days, for the most part it tends to work as advertised.
First off, it's not technically a phone – it works by syncing with your phone via Bluetooth – you can't actually receive calls (there's no speaker, microphone or cellular connection), you can tap to answer calls, but you'll only answer them on your actual phone.
Swiping up on the touchscreen brings up notifications. I saw messages from Signal, news push alerts, X notifications, texts, and more. I have to say, reading tweets next to my vape is really fun (you only see individual tweets that arrive as notifications, you can't scroll through your entire X feed).
WearinOS apps are buggy
But none of it works very well. To set this all up, you need to download an app onto your phone called “WearinOS,” which seems designed not for the Swype vape, but for some kind of wearable fitness tracker. (Oh, and did I mention that the Swype also has a built-in fitness tracker that can track your outdoor cycling while you inhale your Watermelon Ice vape juice.)
WearinOS is broken in weird and interesting ways. When I was setting it up with my iPhone, elements of the app would sometimes not fit on my iPhone's screen. It's as if the app wasn't formatted properly. There are buttons that do nothing when tapped, like the button to check for firmware updates. The weather feature crashed the app every time.
Swype's own use of the touchscreen was also very buggy; I had similar issues with trying to tap buttons but not being able to tap them at all. Swype came with two number-tile games, Aircraft Battle and 2048; but 2048 never seemed to work at all; I couldn't tap a single tile. (Samantha Cole had the same problem with this game, so it wasn't just an issue with my device.)
Other elements didn't work as expected – for example, I could see X's posts and iMessages, but what I saw was actually a mirroring of the push notifications I was receiving on my phone – news alerts, social alerts, iMessages, Signal messages, and even push alerts from the Target shopping app – all piled up together, making it sometimes hard to tell which app a notification was coming from.
But the biggest issue was that Swype didn't seem to reliably update new messages. I'm not sure if this was due to a Bluetooth connection loss or some other issue. Half a day went by without notifications updating, and I couldn't figure out why that was happening or what ultimately fixed the issue.
It's worth noting that “WearinOS” is listed in the Google App Store as the property of Shenzhen Communication Technology Co. Just to be clear, I'm doing this for fun and wouldn't encourage anyone to do the same. (I've reached out to the China-based company for comment.)
E-cigarette experience
I'm not a vaper (I tried a Juul years ago), so my judgement on the actual vaping experience is limited. From the moment I opened the package, the smell of Watermelon Ice was so strong that my editor was convinced she got a contact high, even though none of us had smoked it. (I'm not sure if that's possible, but we could definitely smell it.) [Editor’s note: It is possible!]
The first cigarette I smoked was accidentally too big, and I was trying to look cool and take a selfie to document my first smoke, but instead I took the picture while my face was contorted in shock and disgust at the watermelon explosion.
If you're a regular vaper, this will probably do the trick: it comes with 5% nicotine juice, has three levels of draw power, and is said to last up to 30,000 puffs.
But can it actually replace your cell phone?
Sadly, for brain-rotten nicotine addicts, Swype is no replacement for a cell phone.
Swype's bugginess means it can't be used as a replacement for, or certainly a complement to, your phone, but I remain hopeful: if it actually worked a little better, I could imagine it could work as a way to get important notifications without having to stare at your phone.
For many of us, the temptation of our phones is strong — we scroll through Instagram when we mean to check email or text messages. I love my Apple Watch because I know it will notify me about important things (calls and texts), but I can leave my phone in my purse or in another room and not have to worry about checking it too often.
People are feeling overwhelmed by their phones and looking for ways to reclaim some brain space and break the dopamine cycle of mindless scrolling. “Dumb phones” are becoming popular. The LitePhone, a $300 dumb phone that can only make calls and send texts and has no additional apps beyond an alarm and calendar, has been a hit.
A friend of mine traded in her iPhone for a Light Phone because she was frustrated with being constantly distracted by her phone. She gave up after two days of using it and went back to her smartphone. “I can't live as a human being without a smartphone,” she said. (Business Insider's Jordan Hart also came back to reality after using the Light Phone for a week.)
Frankly, I think it's time to start expecting more from our smartphones. Why? Can not Will my iPhone also deliver melon-flavored nicotine? You've got to dream bigger, Tim Cook.
