A mobile phone that was created within the popular video game Minecraft actually works, with the gamer able to place video calls from inside the game.
A video showing the operational mobile phone was uploaded to YouTube by Jordan Maron, who is also known as CaptainSparklez. Some would remember Maron as the man who was able to purchase a mansion for the price of $4.5 million through the money that he was able to raise while streaming video games.
In the video, Maron noted that the mobile phone within Minecraft was made possible through a partnership with the carrier Verizon, with the description of the video in YouTube stating that the project was sponsored.
While the Minecraft mobile phone can be seen as an advertisement for Verizon, it is still a pretty cool thing to see.
The video shows Maron using the Verizon-powered Minecraft mobile phone to access and browse through the Internet, as well as to place video calls to other people. Minecraft is not able to show high-resolution images through the mobile phone's screen, instead replacing the images as rendered by blocks. From the opposite end of the call, people that would receive the call made by the Minecraft mobile phone will see the gamer as his avatar in Minecraft.
Gamers can also take selfies with the Minecraft mobile phone and then send out the images to the real world, though the selfies would show the gamer's Minecraft avatar.
Verizon explains that the Minecraft mobile phone was made to work using a web application named Boxel, which the carrier created. The app is able to transform streaming video and web pages into blocks, which can then be built within Minecraft within real time. A server plug-in then utilizes the Boxel client to maintain the communication between Minecraft and the real world, as being translated by the app.
Minecraft gamers can download the web application and try out building their own mobile phones within the game, as the code for the application was uploaded to GitHub.
