Tag Archive for Pocket Fan

Unexpected Uses for Pocket Fan

I envisioned Pocket Fan to be a novelty app. What else would you call an app that displayed an animated fan? It certainly wasn’t supposed to be useful. My perception changed when I got this comment on the Android Market:

Can’t sleep without the sound of a fan. This is almost perfect for power outages. Just needs to stay open and not black screen after 1 minute.

When I first read that comment, I thought to myself “He can just set his screen to never time out…” and went back to work on my game. Then I saw a post on reddit entitled “I can’t sleep unless you’re near me…”. It was just a picture of a box fan, but it all clicked for me then. Pocket Fan could be used as a sound machine or noise generator.  Read more

Pocket Fan Requested Features List

Here is a list of user-requested features:

Short Term:
  • Fan audio should ramp up/down when the fan starts/stops. Done
  • Animation should speed up/down when the fan starts/stops. Done
Longer Term:
  • Voice changer when talking into the mic as if talking into a fan. Abandoned, platform limitations.
  • Use phone’s camera as the background for the fan.
I’ll be working on these over the next couple of days.

Pocket Fan v1.0 Released

Check out my first Android app, Pocket Fan. This state-of-the-art handheld electric fan simulator will keep you cool, assuming you are not already hot.

Keep in mind that Android does not yet support blowing air through the device’s screen so any cooling effect will be purely coincidental.

Pocket Fan