‘Send Me to Heaven’ App: Throw Your Phone in the Air to Score Points

Maybe have a back-up phone handy. Or two

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Jesse Millan, Petr Svarovsky

Remember being told to reach for the stars when you were growing up? Now there’s an app for that.

In “S.M.T.H. (Send Me to Heaven)” — made public this week by Norwegian developer CarrotPop — players have to throw their device in the air as high as they can without breaking it. The device’s accelerometer calculates how far it goes, and the results are uploaded to the app’s leader boards, which are organized by the top 10 scores of the day, week, and worldwide. If the phone rotates dramatically after it’s tossed, scores might be skewed.

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And don’t even think about parachuting it off a building or launching it with a rocket; an error message is supposed to show up when unrealistic measurements are sensed. However, the top score is held by someone who threw a phone more than 40 meters (about 131 feet) high, which the app’s designer Petr Svarovsky attributes to people building slingshots to catapult their phones and posting photos of them on Facebook. In the future, a GPS function will help  thrill-seekers find local competitions — the first of which already took place during a music festival in Oslo, Norway last month, when the app was still a prototype.

Tossing a phone high enough to catch on one’s own arguably takes more skill. “People like to show off their expensive models, we also like to show off that we do better than other people in sports,” says Svarovsky, who has also created an app that screams and forces users to scream back the same way (apparently mostly popular with girls in China). “I am very interested in what happens when you take games out of the computer, and it takes place in public space,” he adds.

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Planning to try out this app in a park? Remember: safety first. “Be careful not to injure yourself or others,” says the app’s description on Google Play. “Be always aware that there is enough space above you and around you. Do some training to learn the right skills to get the best results.” Before they can play, users have to agree to a disclaimer that says the app’s developers are not responsible for damages to phones or their owners. In fact, while Android smartphone users can download S.M.T.H. for free, it is not available in the iTunes App Store. Apple reportedly rejects developer submissions that could irreparably harm iOS devices.

So far, S.M.T.H. already boasts 300 five-star reviews (the highest rating) from thrill-seekers on Google Play — including some from people who claim they have already broken their phones. One user wrote that his device is still in one piece, but noted, “No Point On Playing This UNLESS Your Rich And Can Buy A Few More Phones.”

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