blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/11/five-gadget-whi.html
jpg Calling a cellphone a mere phone seems a little silly these days. The little pocket wonders now do so much they are really handheld computers. The process of mashing one or more gadgets together in the same box used to be called convergence, but that approach quietly died as the mobile phone ate up any and every rival device. So successful has this been that whole product categories have had the life choked out of their twitching bodies by the phone. The following list is an obituary to five of them, plus a look at the cellphone's next victim. Right back to the Psion Organizer in 1984 (above), the PDA has essentially been an electronic calendar, address book and notepad. And right back to the Psion, with its squishy, non-QWERTY keyboard, they've been harder to use than their paper equivalents. Still, despite this, it took the cellphone to finally kill them off. Who on earth would take out their PDA, call up a contact and then tap the phone number into their phone? Nobody, which is why, as the calendaring functions of phones got better, the PDA was quietly retired. The Camera We're not saying that the standalone camera is dead. Far from it -- one look in the street will show you how popular is the modern DSLR. But for people below a certain age, the camera phone is the one they use, and it has already killed off the cheap, junky bottom end of the digicam market. It's easy to see why: Although the pictures from the small sensors might not be great, the camera phone is always in your pocket, and you can snap and send pictures over the network in seconds. This convenience more than makes up for the noisy pictures. Remember the saying: The best camera is the one you have with you. The UMPC The Ultra Mobile PC was a failed experiment, although once in while a company will drag the rotting corpse from its comfortable grave, slap on a bit of makeup and try to sell the idea again. Think about it: The UMPC was a full-fledged computer crammed into a tiny box with an impossible-to-use keyboard, with pathetic battery life and a hilariously high price tag. The phone, in contrast, offers an operating system and interface designed for the modest hardware on which it will run. The iPhone and the G1 are both handheld computers which happen to have a phone attached. And if you really do need a bigger screen, you can pick up two or three netbooks for the price of one UMPC The Phone Hands up who still has a home land line with a telephone attached? Now, keep your arm in the air if you ever make calls on it. We still keep these old tethered phones around, for calling the emergency services if nothing else, or because its cheaper to buy an all-in-one package from the local telco. Part of this is the convenience of always having it with you, even in the house. But we think a bigger part is that the humble telephone just hasn't kept up with technology. The handsets just don't have the features we're used to. And when we do use a land line, we look up the number on our cellphone and then type it in. Small wonder that most people just press the green button on the mobile instead. The MP3 Player Almost every phone comes with an MP3 player. We guess that in a few years, even the iPod will be dead, replaced entirely by the iPhone (and the iPod Touch, which is really just a cellphone without a phone).
The MP3 player will join the PDA in the gadget graveyard within a few short years. Next: The Notebook It will take some time, but it's easy to imagine the cellphone completely replacing the laptop for mobile use. Sure, we might keep one at home for work, but the cellphone already does most of what our notebooks do. We can listen to music, play movies and use the internet. One day, those big old, battery-sucking computers will be an amusing relic. Ironically, these future phones might be lacking the one thing that gave them their name -- a phone. When fast data connections are ubiquitous, voice traffic will inevitably be sent over the internet.
Nov 17, 2008 7:17:38 AM Personally, I keep my landline around because I can't get DSL without it. I'd be perfectly happy to get rid of it, yet I pay an extra $30 a month (including fees and taxes) for services I don't want and can't get rid of from the local monopolist.
Here is an other example: How about the wrist watch, except in it's most expensive form? I don't see many people wearing watches and it's more of a fashion statement than it is a timepiece.
Nov 17, 2008 7:25:21 AM Unless cell batteries get significantly better, I don't see the mp3 player disappearing. I like having the two devices separate, that way I can listen to music until my ears bleed...
Nov 17, 2008 7:42:35 AM The death of the MP3 Player is being greatly exagerrated. My 8yr-old has had an MP3 Player for two years now, but it's waay too early for a personal cellphone for her. And as long as parents are footing the bill, the majority of young people will have a personal music/video player long before they get their own phone.
Nov 17, 2008 7:52:21 AM in blighty we call these by the title of 'mobile' as in "I've just got myself a new mobile". Therefore we aren't limiting the semantic relation of it to the fact that it is merely 'cellular ie cell' or a 'phone'.
Nov 17, 2008 7:57:01 AM I keep my land line because I remember that a few years back during the east coast blackout the land line phones worked perfectly while the cell system was completely hit and miss, let alone powered. I'm also troubled by the number of people moving over to VoIP only telephones at home. I can't think of a single time where I picked up a land line and did not hear a dial tone, where as I can think of MANY times where my internet was down for no apparent reason.
Nov 17, 2008 8:02:35 AM Warren, you should be able to get DSL without having to pay for land line service. Call up your phone company and tell them you want your DSL running through a "dry loop" and that you want to eliminate your landline account. A dry loop allows you to have DSL without a landline account. Most phone companies don'tvadvertise this because it obviously costs them money.
Nov 17, 2008 8:15:05 AM If by the "cheap, junky bottom end of the digicam market", the author is referring to the compact camera market, then the only element of truth in this is that no-name peripheral manufacturers can no longer punt flimsy pieces of plastic consisting of a shitty sensor and a shitty lens as proper cameras. Sure, phone cameras are getting better, but try taking pictures in less than full daylight without flash... or even with the underpowered flash most of these phone cameras have. phone" yet by any means, and given the size of the sensors in phones, it may not be so for a long time to come. As for landlines, they're still a lot more reliable than VoIP, and both of these things are still cheaper than mobile calls for many people, especially when mobile subscriptions ("plans" for you Americans) usually elevate prices for things like calling foreign numbers, special numbers, other networks. I agree with the points about the bizarre nature of fixed-line phones, switches and attempts to make them more flashy, but then the mobile manufacturers (yes, even Apple) could still learn how to cut away the shiny stuff and concentrate on the interface, too.
Nov 17, 2008 8:42:10 AM How about the pocket calculator? Admittedly, this device was already in the death throes before cell phones became so commonplace, but I use the calc feature on my phone all the time.
Nov 17, 2008 8:44:09 AM I keep my landline because the voice quality on cell phones sucks. I also don't like holding that EM generator next to my head for more than a few minutes.
Nov 17, 2008 8:44:44 AM Re: SWITAWI You're absolutely right about the exaggerated rumors of the death of the MP3 player. When comparing the audio quality found in your mp3-capable cell phone with that of a dedicated mp3 player, the dedicated player will always come out on top. Plus, the actual syncing software used for creating play lists and the like is almost always much more robust than anything obtained for the phone. The only device currently on the market I can think of that actually does the...
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