Gadgetory

mmm this is David with the verge and this is fear oh it's a Bluetooth controlled ball and it rolls the ball looks and feels a little like a baseball it's about the same size and it's a translucent white color but there's all kinds of stuff inside of it it's got a compass and an accelerometer and a gyroscope all to help you control the ball with your phone there's also an LED light inside which can show thousands of different colors and that's one of the coolest things about the Sphero is all the different colors it can glow it kind of looks like it'll light up a rave it's super easy to setup it connects via bluetooth to iOS and Android devices and it pairs really easily and then connects automatically as soon as you turn it back on after that most of what you do with the Sphero you actually do on your smart phone there are five apps available for both iOS and Android that let you do things like drive the ball around you can change its colors there's one that lets you play golf there's one that lets you take pictures with your phone while also controlling the ball so you can mess with your pets and then take pictures of it and there's one which I really like that lets you actually draw a route for the ball and then have it follow it so you can draw these crazy complex routes around your living room and have the ball go where you want it to unfortunately for right now that's about all the Sphero can do it's a cool fun device that gets sort of boring after about an hour of use and hours about right because that's how long the battery lasts to the apps are fun and gimmicky and the company that makes the Sphero called Orbotix has actually come out with an SDK so other developers can make apps for the platform and people come out with cool apps this could actually be a really fun device but for right now it's something you'll take out of the box play with for a couple of hours and probably forget that it exists and unfortunately at a hundred and twenty $9.99 it's a little expensive for a pet toy which it's great at and just kind of doesn't do enough for everything else you