Tuesday, January 14, 2003
Why the Future Belongs to the Phone
Posted by Jason Dunn in "ARTICLE" @ 08:00 AM
"Eventually these devices will be remembered as amusing artifacts of an era when big, clunky cell phones could barely display a single line of capital letters. Today, new wireless phones have lots of memory, plenty of processing power, and highly readable screens. There should be no reason for you to carry two devices; PDA functions belong in your phone.
This is not to say that PDA makers won't keep trying. Palm, for instance, has slashed prices to $99 for its stripped-down Zire and put Bluetooth in its wildly overpriced Tungsten T. But once your phone can sync with your calendar and your contact list, the Zire is just one more battery you have to manage. And spending extra for a Bluetooth phone so you can dial it with your Tungsten while performing a three-handed juggling act seems the height of techie ludicrousness. At least more and more PDAs this year will come with Wi-Fi built in, which should keep them useful for people who use specialized applications and for road warriors who want a quick hit of e-mail with their lattes."
The author of this article, Stephen Manes, has some great points, but he doesn't quite state the obvious: non-connect PDAs that can't function as phones will be obsolete within a couple of years. There's an evolution that's definitely happening, though it's painfully slow to watch. PDAs are evolving towards phones by picking up cellular functions, and phones are evolving towards PDAs by picking up real operating systems and applications. The newest phones have more "PDA" in them than the newest PDAs have "phone" in them.
The real question four to six years from now won't be a matter of which is "better" (a PDA or a phone) - neither one in it's current form will exist. Instead, every device will function as a phone, a data entry device, a data viewing device, and a general-purpose communications device (IM, IRC, etc.). The choices will be based on screen size, data input method, battery life, etc. - all the things we already take into account when buying a phone.
What do you think?
This is not to say that PDA makers won't keep trying. Palm, for instance, has slashed prices to $99 for its stripped-down Zire and put Bluetooth in its wildly overpriced Tungsten T. But once your phone can sync with your calendar and your contact list, the Zire is just one more battery you have to manage. And spending extra for a Bluetooth phone so you can dial it with your Tungsten while performing a three-handed juggling act seems the height of techie ludicrousness. At least more and more PDAs this year will come with Wi-Fi built in, which should keep them useful for people who use specialized applications and for road warriors who want a quick hit of e-mail with their lattes."
The author of this article, Stephen Manes, has some great points, but he doesn't quite state the obvious: non-connect PDAs that can't function as phones will be obsolete within a couple of years. There's an evolution that's definitely happening, though it's painfully slow to watch. PDAs are evolving towards phones by picking up cellular functions, and phones are evolving towards PDAs by picking up real operating systems and applications. The newest phones have more "PDA" in them than the newest PDAs have "phone" in them.
The real question four to six years from now won't be a matter of which is "better" (a PDA or a phone) - neither one in it's current form will exist. Instead, every device will function as a phone, a data entry device, a data viewing device, and a general-purpose communications device (IM, IRC, etc.). The choices will be based on screen size, data input method, battery life, etc. - all the things we already take into account when buying a phone.
What do you think?
