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Farewell to PDAs, Hello to Smart Phones
Roland Piquepaille writes "Is it time to get rid of your PDA? Apparently yes, according to General Motors, writes Ephraim Schwartz in InfoWorld.The subtitle of this story is pretty clear: "GPS, Java, and push-to-talk give smart phones a clear edge over PDAs." "General Motors announced last week that it will partner with wireless carrier Nextel to use Nextel?s Motorola cell phones with data capabilities to market a field-force management application to its commercial truck fleet customers." GM chose these cell phones because people feel more comfortable with, but also because they can run sophisticated applications. And of course, because they are cheaper than handhelds, both to purchase and to maintain. Check this column for a summary and references."
Look at the phones now... it's not that phones are getting the advantage over PDAs, it's that the distinction between a phone and a PDA is slowly disappearing.
I've had the chance to play with some of the new offerings from Sony-Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung and honestly they are barely different from a small Palm.
But the user is still stupid.
Linux 2.6.0-test4. Get it before SCO does!
Is it time to get rid of your PDA? Apparently yes, according to General Motors
Definitely no, according to anybody who wants to partition their personal data into a private space unconnected to snoops, spies, and busybodies.
I prefer to be the only bridge between some information and the outside world. So I say 'no thank you' to the notion that everything on my PDA should be connected in real time to a telephone/digital network every time I make a phone call.
Nope. Not interested.
But let's face it, prodding at that kind of keypad with an index finger is not a convenient user interface. I use WAP quite rarely since it it's usually much more convenient to wait a little while until I have a moment to sit down at a proper computer.
I know they haven't officially linked mobile phones to cancer (but hey what doesn't cause cancer these days?) - however personally I am not that keen on having a PDA that irradiates me every time I use it.
There are already a few phones out there that combine a regular cell phone and the functionality of a PDA. While I like the idea of carrying one device instead of two, I hate every signle one of these phone PDA's that I have tried. Why? Mainly because the PDA functions aren't very good. I guess that phone companies are lousy at making PDA's, and they seem to focus on phone-related functionality.
Here's what I would do if I were them: start with a really good PDA, much like the current line of PDA's from the well-known brands. That means you have Java, you could add GPS and whatever, you already have an address and phone book, and a means to enter phone numbers and SMS messages easily. To add phone functionality, all you need is a GSM/GPRS module, and perhaps a mike and loudspeaker.
Another thing: PDA's are fully programmable. Here's a tip for mobile data providers, we don't need proprietary mobile data applications, we just need data transport. Once we have that and our programmable PDA's, we can build our own apps. We don't have or want to rely on silly protocols such as SMS or MMS either: just let us send regular emails, perhaps with an attachment.
In other words, try making a cell phone out of an organiser, not the other way around.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
"Sir, please put away your phone while you are on this flight!"
"But, it's my organizer..."
"Sorry, it's a phone. Put it away."
Phones have to last for several days or even a week always on and without recharge, have to be easy to carry and easy to make and receive calls.
PDAs have to be easy to use, powerful, flexible, colour, large screens. When you add these features to phones, you lose the easy to carry and battery lifetime features of phones.
All of the smartphones i've seen have made poor PDAs and poor phones.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
1) Combo will either be too big for an ideal phone or too small for an ideal pda.
2) PDAs should have long battery life. But they don't when part of a power-guzzling cellphone.
3) Can't talk and tap at the same time. Unless you've brought along the earpiece attachment. But then there you go carrying two objects again.
4) PDA/cellphones usually seem to be less expandable or a few OS versions behind the latest solo PDAs.
5) In the US, switching to a different wireless carrier means switching to a different phone. With a combo unit, you'd have to switch to a different PDA too.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
I can get all the functionality of a PDA from a piece of paper. The only reaon I keep the Toshiba e330 I won is that it IS a fairly decent MP3 player. OTherwise it would have been on Ebay. The last thing I want anyway is to be constantly wired up so that idiots can call me and instant message me about problems they could solve themselves if they used their brains instead of their phones. Now go outside and play.
Vote Quimby!
As a fleet management device, GM has made the right choice here. The Motorola telephones are great little toys and the nextel billing is very flexible. Currently we use the Motorola i30's in a 200+truck operation. The phone can be programmed with all the numbers they need to have, and locked out from dialing other numbers. The direct-connect function makes it very easy to get a hold of a driver, and does not fall under any of North America's hands-free laws, as it is treated as a CB radio. The phones also have handsfree via a headset, and it makes for a very efficient and safe way to manage your fleet. Repairs are easy, as long as the simcard remains intact, you just slide it into another telephone, and all the settings are transferred. Once our contract runs out on these phones, we are expecting to go to a model with GPS, such as the i88. This phone runs java apps, and someone has written a program to real-time track his phone via that and mapquest (I found the link in a sig), and that means we can drop our current sattelite tracking system. All of this means cost savings, and that makes it perfect for fleet management.
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
These limitations (and I know that not all Palm-style machines have them all, but it's a common impression) don't apply to all palmtops. Mine has a keyboard you can touch-type on; I've used it to write articles for publication, large applications, etc. It has a 640x240 screen that's plenty wide enough to read books, web pages, spreadsheets, etc. Its OS (EPOC, the forerunner of Symbian OS currently powering many mobile phones) is exceptionally stable -- apart from hardware failure, I don't think it's crashed once. Although I have a powerful desktop machine, I only connect to it for backups; everything I use my Psion for stays there, and I've never felt the need to sync with anything else. I have lots of powerful applications at my fingertips: office apps that can exchange files with Word and Excel, route planning/GPS, capable web browsers, a Doom engine and many other games, you name it.
People are often amazed by the things I've got to hand: the Concise Oxford Dictionary, Brewer's, Webster's, the Jargon File, and loads of similar reference works; three different Bible translations; MBs of fiction and other books; the core data from the IMDB, etc. Most of the time it's my only email client, and also my only Off-Line Reader for the CIX BBS, holding well over 100,000 messages -- both connecting via my mobile phone as well as land lines. It has Java, Perl, Python, and also a powerful built-in language called OPL (recently open-sourced); and it's possible to do full-scale development on it (I know coz I'm co-author of the OLR mentioned before). It uses standard TrueType &c fonts, displays PDFs, connects with FTP and telnet, plays back MP3s, and loads more. In short, it's a fully-fledged, powerful computer in its own right.
I mention all this not to show off (well, maybe just a bit :) but to show that there's much more to pocket computers than most people think. (Lots of folks, especially in the USA, have never heard of Psions, which is a shame. Although they're no longer made, second-hand ones are highly sought-after.) And yet most people still think of a palmtop as something just for looking at a few agenda entries, checking a few addresses, and playing a few games.
If that's all you think a PDA is good for, then no wonder people think you can squeeze it all onto a phone! But for those of us who really use our palmtops, this seems a waste, a travesty of what mobile computing could be.
OTOH, maybe things aren't so depressing. It's possible that once all those simple PDA functions have been transferred to phones, that there will be room for some market differentiation, and that more powerful palmtops might become more popular. When Psion pulled out of the consumer market, their message was effectively "everyone wants Palms; too few people want something more powerful". Maybe if all of those light users move onto something even smaller (in every respect), there will be enough of us left for it to be worth making powerful pocket computers again.
Well, I can hope...
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You're going to end up with reduced quality of both components. You'll have a substandard PDA that eats your cellphone battery. If you throw in a digital camera as well, it'll probably be 640x480 at best, eat your battery, and...y'know, decent lenses and flashmemory have mass and volume. Me, I'd rather have a light, easily-accessible cellphone that I actually will bother to carry on walks and stuff. And if it's stolen, I haven't lost my organizer too. If I ever have the inclination, the need, and the money at the same time, I'll look into a PDA. And as for digital cameras, often the second or third device in a Frankenstein handheld, I like to have at least 2.2 megapixels. So I can have my pictures printed without lines through them.
What kind of super-secret things do you have in your PDA that somebody would want desparately enough to hack into your phone for?
:-)
The point is not what there IS, but the potential damage/loss because of the open availability of that information.
I can use the metaphor of an open house, "why lock your home, what do you have that is valuable?". Or furthermore, why don't you live in a completely transparent house where passer-bys can see what you are doing? What can be so interesting about your life that people would want to see?
Now in light of those questions consider why webcams are so popular. People like to sneak around, look where they are not supposed to. Voyeuristic tendencies are natural just because of the human curiosity (the difference is, some place their curiosity in "clean" areas, while others don't)...
In other words, it's mainly a matter of choice. If you want to leave yourself open, then do so. But some technologies (e.g. DRM) are potentially limiting in the sense that they remove the option of keeping your privacy if so you wish. But even the most boring person has something worth checking out, or else TV would be much smarter.
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