My partner once received a toothbrush like this. I enjoyed the instruction manual's image showing someone using their phone instead of the mirror: https://imgur.com/a/VfT2WEl

Alternative interpretation: person is looking at the data in the app while brushing.

Of course, it could also be a replacement mirror, but given that there are tiles drawn next to it and the phone holder is a suction cup on what vaguely looks like it might be a mirror, I doubt the phone is meant to be a mirror. Or am I missing the point here and is the message simply that one should be looking in the mirror rather than their phone while brushing teeth?

I own one of these toothbrushes. It’s a total gimmick and I never used the smart features.

Here’s why: You need to look into the phone while brushing because it uses the front camera to do its thing. Pairing bluetooth and opening an app every morning is way way too much work for a 2min task. Screw that

Why does it unpair every day?

I like the Snapchat text box on top of it.

10 years ago, a Bluetoothbrush would be a joke, but now it's reality.

I remember a good 20 years ago a joke being a remotely controlled vibrator. I believe it was called iBrator, or something akin to that. Fast forward, I saw it in a video the other day..

Not only that but they’re hugely popular in camming. They hook them up to the tipping system to provide a form of viewer interaction.

It's called ohmibod, for those doing scientific research. Interesting at which point in time will youtube, twitch, pornhub and livejasmin merge into one big ...ing experience, that we yet have to invent adjective for.

Worse, I remember a joke about buying a bottled water. Now they seriously shoot bottled water reviews on youtube and tap water is a health danger.

It still is a joke (of a product), it’s just that it’s now also a reality.

It doesn't say you need the app to use the toothbrush either? It's just a gimmick to charge a premium over a regular electrical toothbrush.

It’s as if we hadn’t discovered mirrors yet.

Mirrors? You mean those webcam-connected monitors that livestream your image back to you after running image recognition to figure out how well you brushed your teeth?

I just had a weird realization that we are probably actually only 10-20 years away from people starting to use a webcam monitor combination instead of mirrors as a mainstream (albeit high-end) option.

It adds 100 milliseconds of latency for no benefit, but it only costs $1000!

And it’s sensitive to moisture! And requires power! And probably software updates. And at some point, it’ll start selling your data and showing you ads. And then one day the manufacturer will brick it remotely because they don’t want to support it anymore, even though it was still working.

.. and when inexorably it gets hacked it will get you your 15 Mb of fame.

Sibling comments might want to search for "smart mirror" ;) though they're usually an actual mirror with an embedded display.

... that's weird... I've been using my smartphone like that since my extremely late 2015 adoption of the technology.

No, I mean a scenario where instead of hanging a mirror in your high-end designed bathroom you are actually using a monitor. I can already imagine the advertisements in a catalogue where you are checking out the weather or watching CNN while brushing your teeth and it's all integrated.

And I can imagine the advertisements on the mirror you have to look at while shaving. Or before.

A quick message from our sponsors before your mirror sessions starts

"Sorry I'm looking a bit out of sorts, my mirror had a update so I wasn't able to do my makeup this morning"

For you, it was the day of your job interview for your first C-suite position.

For us at Microsoft...it was Tuesday.

well benefit is that the fancy mirror can add filters to make you feel better about yourself :)

One could use social media as their distributed mirror.

Some people use their cellphone as a pocket mirror to apply make-up in a pinch. So we're there already.

Because other humans pay money for this.

And we're probably not that far away from Health Insurance Companies using your toothbrush's data to calculate your rates.

Am I playing poker with my insurance companies?

In that insurance is a game of hidden information, yes.

The problem being solved isn’t how to have cleaner teeth, it’s how to sell people more expensive toothbrushes when the existing options do the job perfectly adequately.