It's been only two weeks since Grand Theft Auto 5 launched on PC, and already someone has created the game's smartphone in real life.
This isn't the iFruit companion app, which gamers have been using to supplement their GTA 5 experiences, on iOS and Android devices, since the game's 2013 introduction on PS3 and Xbox 360. This is — hang with us here — an app on the iPhone that looks like the in-game's smartphone interface yet, more importantly, actually connects to and works in the game.
It's not as simple as downloading a mod and an iPhone app, though. The video seen here shows a smartphone manipulating the game thanks to inputs sent to an Arduino webserver. That's a level of complexity well above the usual download-a-mod-and-try-it-out level.
Still, one has to admire the modder — Reddit user planetleak — and his commitment to creating a real-world application for GTA 5's smartphone. It'd be nice to have this officially supported — it makes for a hell of an alternate controller. But given that at least three or four publicly traded companies would necessarily be involved, one can understand why it wouldn't be happening anytime soon.