There’s a new chat application for Android which only allows you to log in once your phone’s battery charge drops below five percent. That may seem counterintuitive since the application, aptly called “Die With Me,” is not actually going to prolong your battery life and isn’t even designed to be particularly battery friendly. There are plenty of other applications on the Google Play Store already made with those purposes in mind. Instead, Die With Me is best described as a place to gather and discuss the woes of a dying smartphone.
It would probably be easy to slot this app in with the many dark humor-related experiences available on the Play Store and to just leave it at that. However, the app wasn’t initially designed to be that and seems to have found its place serving a niche audience for people who want to discuss the fact that their device is about to die – forcing them to go offline. With consideration for the fact that being without a smartphone has, in the modern world, become a serious source of stress for users, that may actually be more than enough of a purpose for the application to serve. Die With Me is fairly straightforward to use. Users can log into the application with a nickname after giving the app permission to read the current battery status of their handset. Attempting to log in while the battery level is still above five percent results in a message telling the user they’ll have to wait until it’s below that. As shown in the accompanying video, they can then discuss the fact that their device is going to die. In fact, their battery status is shown alongside their messages and when their device does finally give out, other users will be shown a message saying that the user has “died.”
As to the initial purpose of the application, the app’s creator has stated that it was intended to be used as a kind of meet-up or dating application. By only working with devices that are close to going offline, those who met up with the app would effectively be forced to have a real-world discussion with one another rather than continuing to play around with their handhelds. While that particular idea hasn’t come to fruition, the Die With Me Android app is now available for $0.99 on the Google Play Store for anybody who wants to try it out and deal with their smartphone separation anxiety.
