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Why is the Oral-B iOS app almost 300 MB? And why is Colgate's app even bigger..?

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Re: Why is the Oral-B iOS app almost 300 MB? And why is Colgate's app even bigger..?

#211

Post by shiroiushi »

SapporoChris wrote: post #209
shiroiushi wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An electric toothbrush is better than a regular toothbrush for the same reason that your dental hygienist doesn't use a regular toothbrush for your biyearly cleanings.

Okay, so it is better. How much better is it? I don't use an electric toothbrush, I haven't had a cavity since childhood. Why do I need a better toothbrush? Can the cost be justified?

IANAD, but if you're good at brushing, it probably won't cause you to have fewer cavities. But speaking from personal experience, it's better at actually cleaning your teeth surfaces (you can see this yourself when you visit the dentist: notice how much smoother they feel after polishing), and it's just plain easier to use since you don't have to move your arm/wrist around and don't have to worry about making sure you're using circular motions like your dentist recommends. The brush head on an electric brush moves much faster than you possibly could, so all you have to do is put it on your teeth and apply proper pressure. No, it's not as cheap as a $2 toothbrush, but for some at least, the convenience is worth the extra cost. Plus, most dentists I've had in the last decade have recommended using one.

Re: Why is the Oral-B iOS app almost 300 MB? And why is Colgate's app even bigger..?

#212

Post by SapporoChris »

shiroiushi wrote: post #211
SapporoChris wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, so it is better. How much better is it? I don't use an electric toothbrush, I haven't had a cavity since childhood. Why do I need a better toothbrush? Can the cost be justified?

IANAD, but if you're good at brushing, it probably won't cause you to have fewer cavities. But speaking from personal experience, it's better at actually cleaning your teeth surfaces (you can see this yourself when you visit the dentist: notice how much smoother they feel after polishing), and it's just plain easier to use since you don't have to move your arm/wrist around and don't have to worry about making sure yo…

Just be aware electric toothbrushes can cause more abrasion, damaging the dentin. This leads to tooth sensitivity and increased risk of cavities!

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... Conclusion

Using the same brushing force and a highly abrasive toothpaste, manual toothbrushes are significantly less abrasive compared to power toothbrushes for an 8.5—year simulation.

Re: Why is the Oral-B iOS app almost 300 MB? And why is Colgate's app even bigger..?

#215

Post by shiroiushi »

SapporoChris wrote: post #212
shiroiushi wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAD, but if you're good at brushing, it probably won't cause you to have fewer cavities. But speaking from personal experience, it's better at actually cleaning your teeth surfaces (you can see this yourself when you visit the dentist: notice how much smoother they feel after polishing), and it's just plain easier to use since you don't have to move your arm/wrist around and don't have to worry about making sure yo…

Just be aware electric toothbrushes can cause more abrasion, damaging the dentin. This leads to tooth sensitivity and increased risk of cavities! https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... Conclusion Using the same brushing force and a highly abrasive toothpaste, manual toothbrushes are significantly less abrasive compared to power toothbrushes for an 8.5—year simulation.

This seems to be obvious, since you're specifying the same toothpaste and the same brushing force (and I assume the same amount of time brushing). Electric toothbrushes move much, much faster than your arm possibly could, so of course it's going to abrade more. It's like comparing hand-sanding with a piece of sandpaper and a wooden block, to sanding with a powered orbital sander (or any power sander). Of course the power tool is going to wear away a lot more wood (given the same sandpaper grit) than you can with your arm.

So when you're using an electric toothbrush, you don't need to brush as long, or as firmly. It doesn't help that many people tend to brush with way too much force anyway.

Re: Why is the Oral-B iOS app almost 300 MB? And why is Colgate's app even bigger..?

#216

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

radicaldreamer wrote: post #35
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Hypothetical made-up example:) "Dental" chewing gum companies would pay $$$ for info on peoples' brushing habits crossed with demographics and geographical data: if the data shows that there's a particular city or county where people brush their teeth 25-50% less than the general population then there's a good bet they should increase their ad-spend in that area, because (let's say) people who don't brush their teet…

It’s not about data on your teeth, it’s data about your device and network… you can grab all sorts of interesting data on your spending and habits by scanning bluetooth, local network etc. as well as sending up your ip and geolocation every few minutes. That’s the really valuable stuff. The app’s purported aim is simply to get it installed onto your mobile device.

That would be a blatant GDPR violation if there ever was one…

Fortunately for me I put my toothbrush on its own VLAN

Re: Why is the Oral-B iOS app almost 300 MB? And why is Colgate's app even bigger..?

#217

Post by alentred »

cj wrote: post #150
alentred wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> showed an up-to-date current world events news feed Say what now? Oral-B? World events news feed?

ADA recommends brushing your teeth for 4 minutes a day (2 mins morning/night). 2 minutes feels incredibly long for a lot of people. Doing something that feels productive or provides 2 minutes of entertainment while simultaneously operating as a timer seems like not so crazy of an idea.

Oooh! Thank you, it makes much more sense now. It is weird, though, that we humans need to be distracted to focus on brushing the teeth.

Re: Why is the Oral-B iOS app almost 300 MB? And why is Colgate's app even bigger..?

#218

Post by 0xEF »

jjeaff wrote: post #19
larsrc wrote: post #6

The real question is why do toothbrushes need apps in the first place?

the one reason I have used the app is for my kids. it plays animations while they brush and keeps stats and let's them pick avatar colors and stuff as rewards.

Not that I am the world's brightest parent, or anything, but trainiing your kids to do tasks with media consumption as a reward seems like a remarkably bad idea, given how influencing that can be.

Re: Why is the Oral-B iOS app almost 300 MB? And why is Colgate's app even bigger..?

#219

Post by maccard »

sharpshadow wrote: post #79
maccard wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many toothbrush models do you think the average person who downloads this app owns?

Does it uses the pictures in some other ways like a list of available upgrades? Otherwise they save all the traffic and put it on the appstores and users and when they use some service for analytics they don’t need to run any server themselves. Oral-B probably sells worldwide putting everything in the app instead of fetching it maybe saves them good money.

I suspect it saves them peanuts and instead was just the easiest thing to do

Re: Why is the Oral-B iOS app almost 300 MB? And why is Colgate's app even bigger..?

#220

Post by mbirth »

mturmon wrote: post #94
johndough wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What they know is how long the toothbrush is on. How are they going to monetize that data? "We noticed that brushing takes you X seconds longer than usual. Do you want to buy new bristles for your tooth brush?" "We noticed you haven't used our tooth brush in a while. Do you want to buy our new tooth brush?" "We noticed that you started brushing your teeth earlier than usual. This probably means that you started a n…

Yeah, regarding your first point -- the replacement brushes are also an Oral-B product, so prompting for frequent replacement of the brushes would be a way to make more money.

In my Sonicare, the brush heads have an NFC chip in them that stores the “runtime”. After xx uses an icon starts blinking on the handle and the app will tell you that the brush head needs to be replaced. But at least you’re free to ignore that and continue using it.
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