C'mon baby, light my iPhone's fire

Leslie Katz | Sep 18, 2008

You thought your iPhone was hot before? The Sonic Lighter, a new app from Smule, emblazons your phone's display with a simulated flame that you can control by touch or tilt. Ignite the fire with a virtual strike of the display; breathe on the device to control or extinguish the flicker (engage in this latter action in public at your own peril, of course).

While a pretty cool and innovative visual effect for 99 cents, we wouldn't call this a useful iPhone app. Ge Wang, co-founder and chief technology officer of Smule, however, might disagree. "I've found the flame map to be quite useful, especially at night," he said.

But the Sonic Lighter has greater aspirations than lighting your path in the darkness or helping you encourage Journey to play an encore of Don't Stop Believin'.

In addition to captivating onlookers with dancing flames, it contains a sonic modem that lets you ignite adjacent Smule-enabled phones, thus letting you "spread your light around the world", the company says. Read: Spread the Apple word.

Smule's site even hosts an World Wide Ignition Map that traces recently lit Smule flames around the globe (the East Coast and parts of Europe appear to be pretty heated up over the Sonic Lighter at the moment).

Watch the video demonstration below and let us know what you think: Hot or not?