About a year ago I decided to converge all of my devices into one. No more would I be shackled to a PDA, Phone, and MP3 player, no, I would buy one device which would do all of these things. I would buy myself a Windows Mobile PC Phone. Slowly though I've gone back to multiple devices, and this week I completed the dis-convergence of devices when I bought a new PDA.
Now first off, let me just say that I love my phone, it's an Audiovox SMT5600, it's a great phone, it integrates to my Outlook contacts really well, I can surf the internet, it has phenomenal battery life (I regularly go 3-5 days between charges and I never turn it off), and it's got a terrific form factor, small…but not too small.
However, as an MP3 player it's a pale shadow of my 30gig iPod, not only that, but as soon as you start using the phone as an MP3 player you quickly suck up the juice on it…and the phone is too essential a device to be wasting juice on listening to music. As a PDA, it has a horrible interface (I love the touch screen of the Ipaq, which is totally missing from the phone form factor), and the cost to get on the internet is ridiculous for the terribly slow speed that you get.
I just bought an iPAQ rx1950 PDA, which I will be using for my notes and all that goodness. Back in the day I used my PDA for everything. I'd take notes on it, I'd make appointments, I'd write articles, or schedule tasks through it. I really miss those features, and one of my resolutions for the year is to get more organized, something I find hard to do with all of these little pieces of paper flying around.
Plus I want to start developing for hand held devices, and since this has WiFi built in, it's a great test platform for that stuff.
It sucks that I have to carry around 3 different devices, but it's better than carrying around the half dozen pieces of paper that I'm currently depending on.
However this is why I think the iPhone, while a cool toy, will ultimately not do as well as everyone thinks it will. Sure, loads of people will buy it, but after the initial honeymoon period, the phone will quickly lose its lustre.
Here's a few things I wonder about:
Battery Life: How long will it last on a charge? Sure it's easy enough to plug into your work computer…so long as that's where your primary library is. In the best of situations though iTunes is flaky as heck on a Windows machine.
What do Northerners do? I'm not talking about Canadians in particular (Rogers will allegedly have a version of the phone out in late 2007/early 2008), but people who live in cold climes. I know I have gloves on from mid October through April, but you can't wear gloves while using an iPod because the clickwheel is actually operated by the electrical field in your fingertips. It sucks to take your gloves off to navigate the clickwheel. It will suck more to take your gloves off to answer a call (quickly monkey!!! It took you two rings to dig it out of your inner zippered pocket!). UPDATE: I just figured out today that if you moisten the tip of your glove, you can control your iPod!
How annoying will that thing be against your face? My current phone has a mute button right at cheek level. If I'm talking and walking, I often hit the dumb button and then can't talk.
How much cheek grease will it attract?
Of course these last two items could also lead to a proliferation of those stupid wireless Bluetooth thingies.
Which reminds me. When did it become so difficult to tell nerds apart from crazy people who talk to the air?