Honestly, I'm not as surprised as I should be. Minecraft seems to have no limits, and neither do its users. Computers, hard drives, the Manhattan neighborhood, Bitcoin mining… anything goes in the fabulous virtual world this game delivers. And now, a mobile phone joins the list. As a promotion, the folks at Verizon created a mobile phone inside Minecraft that can make video calls and even has a browser to access the Web.
Minecraft is the ultimate sandbox. Users can do whatever they want inside it, and if a standard game doesn't provide the means, a mod is likely to fill the void. Once Minecraft's essential limits dissolve, creativity rules everything, and that's how we've seen things like hard drives or the Manhattan neighborhood at 1:1 scale. Minecraft also carries enormous advertising potential. After all, it has millions of players under its wing, and anything that comes out of the game is sure to attract attention. So what have we got this time? A giant mobile phone. And it works.
The people at Verizon teamed up with Youtuber CaptainSparklez to create a video showing a mobile phone compatible with web browsing and video calls, accompanied by its own cellular network antenna. The goal is for these virtual phones and their corresponding networks inside Minecraft to connect to the real world. Building the tower and the phone requires some materials, but the player's overall work is fairly light. The phone's screen is limited by the resolution Minecraft blocks generate, yet it's obvious it processes requests correctly.
Are they a bit crazy at Verizon? Maybe… but that doesn't change the fact that they achieved their goal. As impractical as it is, Minecraft now has its own mobile phone network that connects to the outside, and anyone interested in seeing part of the code involved can head to the page called Verizoncraft on GitHub.
