Tawkon has been making quiet ripples in the smartphone market. But most people only heard of the Israeli firm after the dramatic rejection of its app by the chief Apple guru himself – Steve Jobs.
For those that are still not aware of what Tawkon is all about, here is a brief summary.
The Tawkon app performs a real time check of the level of radiation your phone emits. It uses a graphical display to measure when radiation reaches unsafe levels and when it is safe to make a call.
You can even configure the app to trigger an alert that prompts you to switch to ear phones if the level of radiation goes up during a call.
Of course, the key question remains: do ordinary smartphone owners find the Tawkon app useful?
Well, probably the most important reason one would want to have Tawkon is relatively straightforward – information.
Ever since the mobile phone became a mass market product, the debate about mobile phone radiation has dominated the conversations of techies and the tech-challenged alike.
Tawkon has taken that conversation a little further by attempting to provide some quantifiable measure of just what levels of radiation mobile phone users are dealing with.
In that sense, consumers now have a somewhat independent party providing information they can use to change their actions – if appropriate.
But that is just one side of the story. Accurately measuring real time mobile phone radiation is a fairly complex affair.
Still, Tawkon employs several “credibile” parameters to determine the level of radiation the user is exposed to – although there are still obviously limitations.
Nevertheless, Steve Jobs claimed Apple has “no interest” in Tawkon. No real shock there, I suppose. Fortunately, the app will be launching on Cydia instead – the unofficial haven for jailbroken iPhones.
