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The Future of the PDA
An anonymous reader writes "XYZComputing is taking a look at the future of the PDA and what obstacles might stand in the way of continued popularity. From the article: 'While is hard not to appreciate the PDA's ability to change with the times, it appears that its heady days of mobile dominance are coming to an abrupt end. A number of factors are competing in the mobile products field right now, all of which are vying for the same buyers. The most formidable competition to the PDA is the smartphone, but there is also pressure from small laptops, the upcoming UMPC, increasingly capable cell phones, and a few other takers, like portable media players.'"
I wrote a couple of articles about where I thought the PDA might be going back in 2002 and 2005. Specifically, I'd suppose (hope) that it might see a resurgence through the iPod phenomenon.
.Mac subscription/connectivity to enable syncing with your desktop/laptop and provide a cell phone service implemented like iChat, I suspect it could be highly profitable.
We really have not seen a whole lot of innovation in the PDA market aside from color screens and somewhat faster CPUs since Palm and then Microsoft entered the market. The first device that truly works as an assistant that is affordable will, like Palm did in the 90's take over the market again. Phone use will be required, but could easily function with a Bluetooth earpiece. It will have to have a big enough screen in portrait or landscape mode to surf the web (surfing the web on my Tungsten T3 sucks), will have to be able to plug into a projector and deliver Keynote (or Powerpoint) presentations, read and annotate pdf's, have an honest 4-5hr battery life (ideally more, but this will depend upon new battery technology or fuel cells), be rugged, have a decent way to enter information through a keyboard (real or virtual) and be reasonably affordable.
The Newton was the original UMPC and did many things very well (including handwriting recognition in the 110 and up), but were waaaay too expensive for their time. I had a 110 and a 120 that I used for years before they simply could not keep up, but that form factor is still ideal. Put a color screen in it, run OS X on a flash drive along with global band cell phone connectivity, 802.11 and Bluetooth and if you can sell it for $700-800 or so, you have the ideal PDA. That may be cutting the margins thin, but if Apple could sell it along with
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I know many people who buy PDAs purely for their gps capabilities
It doesn't even need a color screen, though grayscale would be nice just for legibility reasons.
A 20mhz or so CPU should suffice, if even that much is needed. It would be cool if it could fit in the credit card holder of my wallet (most wallets suck as it is, when you are limited to the subset of wallets that can carry a PDA, it becomes really hard to find a non-cruddy one), and has a week long battery life or some such. Oh yes, and STATIC MEMORY. Honestly, only 4 or so megs are needed.
Price? No more than $50.
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The UMPC, in its current form and price (and usability) will not be an issue in the "downfall" of the PDA. It may have the ability to sideline the PDA in some markets and applications, but those will be relatively limited. Onto my real point. . .
"Increasingly capable cellphones", as the summary puts it, will be the real challenge to the PDA. Many people bought PDAs to be electronic datebooks, address books, and the like. Some people felt it worthwhile to carry them, others (myself included) found it to be a hassle. Cellphones, on the other hand, are far more likely to make it into our pockets. The natural evolution was to add PDA-like functionality. So PDAs evolved into cellphones or cellphones evolved into PDAs. I would argue that there are examples of both (the Treo being a phonified PDA and Series 60 devices being PDAified cellphones).
My take home message is thus: The PDA is not dead. It has merely evolved thanks to the advent of widespread mobile phones. If we look at some current cellphones, many have more power than the original Palm Pilots. About the only thing they lack is a more sophisticated input method (that may be arguable, though, when T9 is compared to Graffiti).
Some manufacturers will still make "pure" PDAs, but the PDA is not dead. The PDA has merely evolved.
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the upcoming UMPC
....
Errr, shouldn't that be
the upcoming video iPod
The current crop of PocketPCs stink. I'm anxious to upgrade, but here is what I am finding:
:(
- NONE offer PCMCIA support (rendering my 5GB HDD useless)
- If you want 128MB or more of RAM, the highest resolution you will get is quarter-VGA (320x240)
- If you want VGA (640x480) resolution, the most RAM you'll get is 64MB
- Lack of accessories (e.g., high capacity batteries)
Thanks to Carly Fiorina canning the iPaq line (she basically brought back the inferior Journada line) expansion capability of the PocketPC is nil, and the quality has only gone downhill. I'm glad she got fired but she managed to kill the PocketPC platform just as it was gaining steam. I still use my 3670 but I need more RAM, higher resolution, a faster CPU, and expansion capability.
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Given that you pretty much need a phone, it makes very little sense to duplicate the comms capabilities in a PDA. As the copmms capabilities improves (better comms at lower cost), we're going to see more of a move towards a "thinner client" phone. Why have a whole lot of storage etc on your phone when you can just pull it off a backend server?
Phones are also far lower cost to the user because they can often be amortised as part of a phone plan.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I think there is a market for PDAs, but not as they are currently configured.
Most of the current uses of a PDA will probably be ceded to smartphones (calendar, address book, tasklist, calculator, MP3 player, etc).
The one advantage that a PDA could have is that its form factor has traditionally been small enough to be truly portable and almost large enough that tasks that are next to impossible on phones' small screens (e.g., surfing the Web, using interactive applications) can actually be performed on them without too much user frustration.
Who really likes using the Internet on a phone? Does anyone think that tablet PCs are really that portable (without a laptop bag)?
Therefore I think there would be a market for PDAs with good sized screens and Wifi/cellular data connections. People would use them as an appliance to surf the Internet and for other applications that required more screen real estate than a phone has. The real killer machine would be about the size of a checkbook (so it fits in your pocket) and flips open to reveal two screens that fit up against each other almost seamlessly, thus doubling screen size.
I think UMPCs are too big, and smartphones too small to be truly portable yet usable Internet appliances. PDAs could fit that niche (thus blurring the distinction between them and UMPCs).
I rely on my Palm for all sorts of things. Primarily just keeping organized, GPS, and a book reader. When i (thought) I had lost my old one a few months back I went out to get another. No retailers carry the things in quantity anymore, and they are hard as all hell to find where they are displayed. One place I went actually had them in a cage underneath a counter, no display or anything. While a smartphone is fine for most, i believe in the general thought that if you take 2 things and combine them, you wind up with 2 inferior things in one. A bulky, annoying phone, and a small-screened pda.
Any information may be true or incorrect depending on your perception of said information
Seems to be pretty obvious to me. The static size of today's PDAs is simply too large. It doesn't readily slide into a normal pocket, it seems clumsy to carry one around with you unless you have a purse or some kind of carrying case. I don't find that to be very convenient. I don't want to need a carrying case to carry my connection to the world's network around with me.
;p
In short, once thin, retractable, high quality touchscreens are available, so you can in effect 'roll up' the majority of the space it takes up while not in use, then you can really expect PDAs to take over, and see them merge many separate technologies (ipod, phone, gps, pda) into one.
How long away is this? You tell me, I'm just the visionary
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I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
A pda is supposed to be a personal digital assisstant. Modern pdas have become pcs, personal computers. They are laptops in a small form factor. If you compare a modern pda to an older laptop you will find many resemblences: their processor speed, their screen size, and the applications. I don't need word for my pda. I don't need games for my pda, though they are nice. If pda manufacturers are going to keep making pdas like pcs they should go all in and include decent hard drive size, so you can store and play music, native usb support, ie a female usb plug, and they should include more computer like software. However they still keep the base functionality of the pda with note takers, address books, and the like. But instead of making a pda with just the basic functionality of a pda, they include computer like apps. They take a middle stand making pdas too expensive for most users, and include apps that most users don't need or won't use. I think that pdas should either be more like a cell phone, simple interface, limited apps, or like a tablet pc: great variety of apps and a decent interface for using those apps.
Compare the installed base of PDAs (either by model, by manufacturer, or by the class of devices as a whole) to the installed base of portable gaming devices (GameBoy, et. al.), and you might see *one* possible direction for the PDA. Previously, games were popular on a PDA, but the limitations (speed, memory, battery life, etc.) made it evident that portable gaming on a PDA wasn't enough to keep the PDA craze alive as we knew it. The Nintendo DS, though, is already starting to look more and more like a PDA every day: there's a homebrew organizer (http://www.youngmx.com/?loc=ndsdev/DSOrganize), a Linux project (http://dslinux.org/), and even a game that features puzzles aimed at/successful with older people (http://www.nintendo.com/gamemini?gameid=tYVqJgro- KG6QL_mMbXFoQTkQIzgi9nU). The fact that it has touch/stylus input and 802.11b is enough to get one's mental gears turning at the possible confluence of a gaming idiom and personal information management idiom in a single device.
Perhaps the change will come from the other direction. As millions and millions more Nintendo DS units (and Sony PSP units, for that matter) are sold, we may get a population of generally older, more sophisticated portable gamers who demand a bit more functionality from their handheld devices -- the very same functionality that a stripped-down, basic PDA would have provided. Instead of a feature-rich-but-mostly-underused PDA that can play games, we might have a gaming-device-that-also-holds-my-calendar that can read e-mails. And I guarantee you that there are more GameBoys out there than Palms.
iPAQ hw6515 is a step in the right direction: it is a PDA with an ability to make phone calls. It has PocketPC OS with its advantages and disadvantages. You can make phone calls, surf the web, listen to MP3s, send e-mails, take photos and find out where you are - yes, it has a GPS module, too. The "qwerty" keyboard is quite handy and beats T9 systems without a doubt. The software has few quirks and takes few days to learn. Setting up secure email submission is difficult if not outright impossible but I guess this was never MS priority.
Doesn't PDA stand for Portable Digital Assistant? If you're cell phone is digital and it assists you in some way isn't it then a PDA? Same with laptops and media players. How can they "compete" with PDA's when them themselves are PDA's? Stupid....
And why are we not looking into the bright future of CRT monitors?
How about going back and talking about the future of typewriting machines?
They're just gone, some of the top players on the market closed their PDA divisions, the smart phone IS a superset of the PDA (most in the business class have stylus, hand writing recognition, basic office apps, browser of course, scheduler etc.).
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I want Jack Bauer's PDA.
I had a Newton long ago. It was a very nice device. It was big and heavy because it was ahead of it's time, but the interface was quite nice. If Apple were to release a new Newton (or whatever they decide to call it) that was nothing more than iCan and Address Book I would be happy. VERY happy. They could add more and make it a full-fledged PDA (SafariMini, iMail2Go, whatever) I would only be happier. Someone with a decent UI touch is badly needed. I've heard rumors that the touch-screen iPod will do this (we'll see if that even exists) and if it does I will gladly upgrade.
Or imagine how long it could last without a charge if it used ePaper? They could make it the size of a PC Card (like the old Rex PDAs) with a touch screen. Considering all the high-rez high-color screens we see out there (in phones, other PDAs, digital cameras, PSPs and DSes, etc.) they could put a great screen in there and have good battery life if they didn't go the ePaper route.
PDAs are OK, but they have enough problems that I can see why more people wouldn't want them (especially if your phone is half-decent and can sync with your computer, stupid Sprint crippleware LG PM-325).
Give me an OLD Newton. Same as it was. Just shrink it (as would be trivial with today's technology) and make it sync with iCal and AddressBook and I'd be happy.
Please Apple, give us a good PDA. You did it for computers, you did it for digital music players, do it for PDAs.
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Look at the palm 700w. It does everything a dell axim does ... has the stupid SDIO slot, and stylus ... you can add sd mem cards or GPS or whatever you want .. plus windows mobile PDA apps. Its the same damn thing as any other PDA but also functions as a phone. Actually, its nicer cause its got a clean little qwerty keyboard right on the front for 1 handed use. I'd never use a plain PDA, but i'm pretty stoked on my 700w.
PDA market won't truly take off until Apple re-enters it. Apple could actually make a PDA that doesn't suck ass. They did it once, they can do it again, squared.
right after the spin-off from Palm, I correctly predicted that the OS itself would someday prove far more valuable than the actual PDAs that used them, as firms such as Nokia et al were using them to run their cell phone OS.
That said, I should point out that my old Palm V still works fine - my son found it under a pile of books last year and asked if he could have it - he uses it as a PDA (plus it's got a nice gunmetal case that flips open he can stick some bills and his Boys & Girls Member Card in).
So, just because other people aren't using it, doesn't mean it's not useful.
Me, I gave up on cellphones for now. Wake me when they become less annoying.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It's somewhat like the Windows monopoly. Everybody has Windows, and everybody has a mobile phone. Those phones will keep adding functionality, co-opting ideas and testing user response till the PDA is a thing of the past, or rather, a function of your phone. Some will never use it, but it'll be there just the same.
By the way, same thing goes for the MP3 player, although that may take a bit longer.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
If phones are replacing PDAs, why are there no current PalmOS based flip phones? I think the Samsung i500 is a great phone - normal cell-phone size and the benefits of a real PDA with PalmOS, but it is no longer made and there are no replacements. Is the licensing for PalmOS that expensive?
Seriously - I have a Sprint 6700 phone. Its essentially a PDA with phone functionality - why is this not considered a PDA instead of a smart phone?
The PDA isn't going to die - its going to get subsumed by devices that offer more features. Duh.
phones are stupid.. PDA's won't die.. they'll just get better when Wireless broadband becomes a standard all across the globe.. especially when someone simply ports GoogleTalk over to Mobile Windows or even Linux for that matter.. i'll just use that for phone calls.. sounds better anyway haha.. bascially, i don't think they need to be innovating the phone.. they need to be phasing them out in my opinion..
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
* Great media player capabilities: Though it won't play DRMed content, it plays standard Divx and MP3s with free software from the Web. (The video player software that came with it was some annoying proprietary thing. The MP3 player was fine, but the free media player I got plays OGGs too.) Battery life can be a problem with long movies, but not for episodes of The Venture Brothers, well if only there were some way to get episodes of that show in DiVX format, I mean. (Oh, The Simpsons, The Tick, GitS: SAC , Paranoia Agent Futurama whatever turns you on... live action TV too, an hour is no problem.)
* Great gaming capabilities: I mean it has a touch screen and an analogue stick... but unfortunately not so much commercial software. Stuntcar Extreme which came with it, is great for showing off it's 3D graphics, rumble feature, and smooth controls using the analogue stick and buttons. For a game that uses the touch screen, the Warfare Inc. demo is kind of fun, and it comes with a version of Solitaire. Homebrew has been sort of hit or miss for me. I like Beats of Rage, but most of the other stuff I tried to install required a memory wipe.
* All the note taking, life organizing, alarm clock type features you would want. Oh, and I downloaded a Tone Dialer for it that works but you have to get the speaker of the Zodiac really close to the reciever.
Annoyingly, the Tapwave Zodiac failed marketwise, I'm not sure why. I'm guessing they had too much debt and needed to hit it big right away. Or perhaps it was simply to beautiful for this world.
Anyway, buy a Tapwave Zodiac! It will make your life better! Chicks dig them... well, ok not all... maybe not even most, but I'm sure some do. Besides it's cheaper than a porsche!
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Yeah, because we all know Microsoft's "Origiami" is going to replace PDAs and be adopted by bored Soccer moms waiting for their kids. :D
There's a lot of different device categories out there, but only so much space in peoples' pockets or in their minds. Two interactive devices, perhaps three if one is special purpose, is probably the limit.
On the high end, small and light notebooks are good enough today that they work as real computers - I have a Panasonic R3, and it's my only computer. I meant to get a real desktop as a complement, but I just never got arond to it. Whenever I have my bag with me (and I usually have), it comes along. And it is a far better platform for "computing" than any PDA out there. If I were to get a PDA again, it would have to be something that complements this one on the low end.
On the other end, my current, normal (not a smartphone) phone is capable of most incidental things I need. Calling (not that I actually speak that often), email, music player, small text reader (directions, schedule and the like), alarm clock, dictionary - web surfing too, though I don't use it much. It's certainly not perfect - the screen resolution does equal that of my old PalmIII, and is in color and much easier to read, but is of course smaller - but it is always with me and it is _good_enough_.
A PDA would have to displace either my phone or my computer for me to consider one again. And to do that it would have to do what the lost gadget did at least reasonably well, and give me something extra - some compelling functionality that would make it interesting to switch in the first place. I am not aware of any such functionality today.
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I love PDAs, I'm never without my last of the line Clie. I find the PDA indispensable not only for keeping lists and contacts but as an e-book, simple camera and a GPS enabled navigator (particularly with vindigo). On the other hand, I have a very simple prepaid cellphone because I despise cellular companies, particularly with regard to the level of control they attempt to maintain over one's data, as well as the privacy failures of various cell features.
And no, paper and pencil notebooks don't cut it. The strength of the PDA is the capacity to sync all the data you use. That and the capacity to dynamically process information such as maps and gps data.
The true strength of the present PDA is that it is always there. A PDA is only effective if you keep it in arms reach at all times, at which point it becomes indispensable.
The thing that PDAs need is a reasonably power efficient means of acessing the net most of the time. In the 80's and early 90's connectivity was a nice thing for PCs now it is effectively indispensable. A perfectly good PC, even insanely tricked out is near useless without a broadband connection. A reasonable web link capability on the part of future PDAs will be equally essential.
The strength of smartphones are that they have this connectivity, the downside is the cost and intrusiveness of cellphone companies and the limitations of power. It's hard enough to keep a charge on either a cell or a PDA the full day through. Doubling the functionality kills batteries very quickly.
Of course, several technologies show promise in restoring the PDAs luster. The first is fuel cell batteries, which address the power limitations, and the second is e-paper which improves the display quality. Add ubiquitous connectivity (wiMax or the like)and you have the rebirth of the PDA.
About 7 years ago, I bought a Palm V. It was a great device, and though I didn't use the calendar as much as some, I used it for notes during meetings. Grafitti took some learning, but it was effective (and I had the local high-score in Giraffe...!). The Palm was merely a smart electronic notebook, but it was good at it. Its biggest problem: I was never on-line. I couldn't send/receive e-mails without connecting to my PC first, and thought AvantGo was great, it was still off-line.
About 4 years ago, I bought a Palm Tungsten. Color screen and all, and being Bluetooth enabled, my plan was to make it go on-line through my phone, and perhaps e-mail pictures from my cameras SD card. It was a joke: The Bluetooth implementation and the IMAP protocol was basically crappy and useless, and the OS couldn't handle even medium sized images. So I ended up using it as a primitive and clunky music player and for some notes during meetings, though the battery life was a bit on the short side. Still off-line, and it appeared that Palm couldn't decide if they wanted to be a highly efficient device for a small number of things, or equally poor for just about anything. IMHO they got stuck between the two chairs.
Today I use a Motorola A1000. The Symbian OS works great, and it's multitasking and memory handling beats the snot out of PALM OS. The phone hardware is a technical marble with 3G, GPS receiver, cameras, PDA-functionality, touch-screen - the works! At least on paper, that is. In reality, it's half a PDA and half a phone being half integrated. I use Wayfinder for GPS navigation with the built-in GPS receiver, and when it works it is GREAT!
That, however was the keywords: "WHEN it works...". The software built by Motorola really stinks! Menus contains spelling errors. Simple things like the alarm clock doesn't work. Sometimes the time is way off, until I reset the device! Sometimes the alarm wakes me up at 0:00 UTC, informing me that it's now 0:00 UTC, and that I'm supposed to get up in 5 hours! The text input is slow, buggy and highly unprecise. The phone and the PDA are in no way integrated: Eg. I cannot make it silent during meetings! The phone has no sound profile support. Bluetooth support is unstable, and only the handsfree profile is supported. The worst part: Motorola has stopped all support on the phone. No new versions will be made, no matter what! A2DP will never be supported, the many small and annoying bugs will never be corrected.
My point. Well, more than one, actually...
1) An on-line PDA or a smart phone would be great, but we're not there yet. Aparently the phone manufacturers cannot make effective PDAs, PALM OS is basicalli where Windows 3.10 were 12 years ago, and in general PDA manufacturers cannot make phones.
2) The devices are pretty expensive, yet support and software stinks. Stopping further development on a device that expensive within 5 years is completely unreasonable, and I cannot even pay to get uprades. "Throw the thing away, and se if you can find a new one..."
3) The devices are somehow seen as "toy gadgets", whereas the original Palm probably was more of an effective tool! This doesn't just go for the lousy support. Take input: In my opinion, nothing has really been as effective as Grafitti! In many ways, the devices are designed as small PCs with files, programs, clipboard etc. rather than exploring more effective ways of creating smart PDAs and smart phones!
Would you spend hours on the phone telling the phone company all about your friends and plans? No? Me neither. That is why my PDA will not be a cell phone unless I can install the software myself, like OpenZaurus. I have similar thoughts about trusting any information to Microsoft in any way.
Privacy aside, cell phone and M$ PDAs suck. M$'s handwriting recognition and interface continuse to be third rate. My old hadspring does a better job and Xstroke under GPE beats them both. Every now and then I check out models in stores and I've yet to see one that's usable. Most Cellphone PDA's, with additional arbitrary limitations are even worse. Blackberry is a usable device and older Treos have been OK, but then you start to get back to the trust issue.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
My biggest beaf with smartphone/PDA's is that (in the US) they are exclusive to the cell phone company for the most part. They have a vested interest in NOT supporting WiFi, and DEFINATELY not VoIP via WiFi. Some companies (Verizon) also make it nearly impossible to install non-verizon applications on it, or deliberately cripple a device that was originally capable of doing much more.
You end up with abortions like the Treo which is a really crappy phone and a pretty crappy PDA. Hell, you can't even get a decent simple phone with bluetooth without also getting the crappy MP3 player and crappy camera (and crippled bluetooth as well.) Furthermore, if you want to send an email they seem to want to tack on another $50 / month on top of a $60 voice plan. Considering DSL can now be had for $20/month, that's insane. Ya, it's wireless, but still...
Now that's not to say that someone couldn't do one of these combo units RIGHT, but given history it is extremely unlikely that we will see it done well in the near future. The cell phone companies just don't get it.
So anyway, I'm still waiting for something like a modern Zaurus which Sharp seems to have discontinued in the US for the most part. Nobody else seems to have anything close. Considering I can get a 1G SD card for $80 retail, these little 64M PDA's are just toys. Give me some ROOM man! Give my the ability to REALLY sync my mailbox which is running about 360M now... Frankly, I don't Need it to be a cellphone - not that I really want to put a brick up to my ear anyway, but I'd use it with a bluetooth headset. And VoIP over WiFi is mandetory.
"but there is also pressure from small laptops, the upcoming UMPC" I have used a Toshiba Libretto 50 for a few years (until I got a Treo 600 couple years ago). The biggest problem I had with this kind of "palmtop" is that the startup time is way too long to be productive. Even with a clean install of Windows, it still takes more than 30 sec to start up and at least 15 seconds for it to come back from hibernation to fully functioning, while a pda will comes back on the moment you press the power button. 30 second startups may be fine if you are using it just as a regular pc, but if you just need to check your address book or email while waiting in line at the post office, that is too long.
According to this article, it is almost impossible to find PDAs on the shelves in Japan... http://www.misc2.com/are_pdas_already_dead_in_japa n.html
I was given a PDA as a gift - an older model iPAQ. They don't make this model anymore, but current models with similar specs, 200Mhz, 64 ram, go for about $200.
I use it everyday, but I can honestly say that I would never pay for one of these myself.
The OS (Windows) is clunky. I know I could install Linux, but most of the software and games for the unit are made for Windows - what else is new? Things aren't where you'd expect them. Most included apps don't close when you quit - Windows is supposed to manage memory, but the unit runs slower and slower forcing you to go into the control panel to the memory section to select and kill open apps.
The hardware buttons suck, quite frankly. This makes the unit useless for emulator games - utterly, utterly USELESS.
I've given up on handwriting recognition - forcing myself to write neatly slows me down too much - it feels like a handicap. I would never buy a PDA without a keyboard of some kind.
I use Linux for everything, and I run Win98 in VMWARE to install apps. Utterly ridiculous that most iPAQ apps require a PC to install. The iPAQ is a general purpose computer, and some third party shareware and free software simply requires that you get the install executable to the unit and run it. Requiring windows to install commercial software is a CLEAR, in your face, slap from Microsoft and greatly lowers the value of the unit.
There are some positives. I use it mostly to read eBooks - I've become a convert. I love reading this way. The unit is light enough that I can hold it with one hand, in a totally dark room and turn the pages with just my thumb. eBooks are REALLY cheap and I can fit a ton on here.
I use it as an mp3 player too.
There are some games that are really really good and work nicely with the stylus. They also have the sophistication of PC games, Age of Empires is a good example. There aren't enough games, however, to make it worthwhile as a gaming platform, especially with the poor hardware buttons.
A good PDA needs a non-clunky OS, a PC/PC OS as an option instead of a requirement, a keyboard and buttons arranged for what many will OBVIOUSLY use their PDA for some of the time, games.
GPE does X and portable Gnome applications. You can use Dilo, which works better than the IE you describe, or mini mozilla, which is slower but resizes images and does other cool stuff. Xstroke gives you full screen graffiti and is the best handwriting recognition I've ever seen. The PIM stuff is supposed to sync with Evolution.
Opie is it's own mini KDE environment and works well. It's supposed to sync with multisynk, but also imports the normal kontact files with ease. Embedded Konqueror is not as good as minimo, but it works well enough. The interface is mature, stable and good.
The built in MMC slot is well used by both, and you can run both at the same time on Zaurus.
Cheers, you don't have to wait for Apple to give you a PDA.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
i know it is hard for us to admit, because then we can't convince our parents, girlfriends, friends, wives etc that they are necessary, but we pda's are stupid!
i myself have had 4, the Handspring Visor Deluxe, the Sony Clie PEG-N760C, the Sony Clie PEG-T615C, and the Tapwave Zodiac2. in early highschool i used the Visor for notes, but it only was actually productive when i bought the Stowaway keyboard (which is so badass).
every PDA i had after that had cooler stuff on it. in late high school, i watched eps of Aqua Teen Hunger Force with some friends during class on the PEG-N760C, in college i did the same thing with the T615C, and eventually played nintendo roms on the Zodiac in class.
hopefully most of us have gone through enough pda's to realize they are nearly useless by now
-- lol pwned
My 6700 pwn3s.
I don't disagree with anything you say, but I do want to say that basically all cellphones made today have more processing power than an original palm pilot, which had a 16MHz Dragonball CPU, from the days when the dragonball was based on the 68000. My Motorola V300, which is a well-outdated phone, was middle of the road when I Got it and has a 206 MHz 32 bit RISC processor and an ATI graphics coprocessor which handles the camera and which does 2d graphics acceleration. Even my crappy little suppository-sized Siemens phone before that had Java, though it was much more limited - still, it implies a certain amount of processor power, probably at least 40MHz and probably 32 bit. Probably almost no cellphones have floating point, but since there's integer implementations of just about every codec we care about (including mp3, ogg, mpeg4 in particular DivX, and so on) that's not much of a show-stopper. With the right software (that from the V500, which is precisely the same phone but with bluetooth and different software) the V300 can even shoot video at some minuscule resolution and encode it using mpeg4. My phone has 5MB flash available, where my upgraded palm pro had only 2MB. My phone has only about 262x144 resolution (Forget the precise, but those numbers sound kind of right) but it's something between 12 and 16 bit color, transflective, and I can play video on it. I remember playing the craptacular monochrome video clips on palm that were functional only as a demo of what the hardware could[n't] do...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My problem with this is not about processing power, or memory, or anything like that, but simply about form factor. Any device that makes a comfortable and easy to carry phone, makes for an awful PDA, and any device that makes a good PDA, is uncomfortable as a phone.
A PDA needs to be mostly screen, and input area. That always makes for having to talk with a brick to your head. In my opinion, all the best mobile phones have been clamshell designs, which retain a comfortable angle between the earpiece and the microphone. I had a BlackBerry, a Sidekick, a Treo, and got tired of all of them because they were crap phones! They were all quite capable PDAs, but just a pain for using as a phone. Now I have a phone with 'smartphone' features, and it drives me nuts trying to put in text on a numeric keypad, trying to use a postage-stamp screen, and having to navigate with unlikely button combinations to read and reply to emails.
I really think there will always be a need for a phone, and a need for a PDA-like device. The form factor requirements between the two are just too different. Perhaps when we have real, working, rollable color screens, and 100% accurate voice recognition that can run on a mobile processor, then things might change, but at the current level of technology, I don't see the need for a little touchscreen you can hold in your hand, and a little device you can hold up to your ear meshing very well.
what evolution nonsense are you talking about??
maybe you mean that cellphone was intelligently designed to become PDAs and vice versa.
Then you just carry your computer with you. Come in to work, plug up to your screen, keyboard, mouse and go to work. When done unplug and on the way home call the kids with it to see what they want to eat. At home use it to open the garage door, lock your car, and unlock the front door to your house. Plug the thing into your TV and watch a movie as it streams to the device or maybe plug in some controllers and play the latest crappy FPS game.
Now what do we need the PDA for? Really? Stop being so backwards, PDA fan boys!
Well, I hope they don't go away entirely...
Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
There have been a number of design decisions that palm and other PDA manufacturers, and cell phone manufacturers for that matter, have made that I've never understood.
Lack of USB support. All the PDAs and cell phones I've seen come with a proprietary port... that I invariably end up getting a usb adapter for. Why the hell don't they just have a USB port at the bottom of the device? Is the hardware too complex?
Think about all the USB devices that this would give you access to... first of all usb keyboards, which are standard and would not require a ton of drivers. Think about the ability to use USB thumb drives to exchange your data...
Other devices like printers would probably be less well supported, seeing as a ton of drivers would need to be stored on the device, but still... it would be sweet.
One of the best things I've seen is the integration of the phone with the PDA. Sadly, because of multiple standards (GSM, CDMA, etc) making that $500-$800 investment is a tough justification on a lot of folks whom don't quite trust the blinking box. Those who are handed devices to use don't pay much attention to their costs, but then you run into the ones who destroy phones regularly. Without an insurance policy a-la Sprint, I would never buy one due to costs. For the longest, Tmobile didn't offer that kind of plan, so I steered far away from expensive phones.
My next point is the fact that a lot of not-so-tech-savvy business people have a hard time adopting the PDA as a daily tool. Sure, it's a marvel when they first get one, but I point to the clunkiness of the Activestink software, and the not-so-easy backup functions. The first time they loose all their data, that PDA goes into a drawer or is not depended upon. Where I feel help is needed is syncronization that is nearly forced whenever the device is online. If people are to depend on the device, you have to take the brains out of backing it up regularly. Of course, I'm in the group that I want more control over the device, but in corporate deployments this should be handled at initial load and locked down for mouthbreathers.
I dread hauling my laptop on business trips. They issued me this 9lb pig that was poorly built, crashes regularly and is an all around PITA at airports. If I could have a PDA that does all the wonderful things like hooking up the projector, have the capability to call out, be a useful office task and internet device and provide me with full flexible storage options, I would leave the laptop far behind. Unfortunately, PDA makers seem to think that proprietary connections and expensive accessories are the way to make people happy - WRONG. I spent crazy money on the last PocketPC I had buying accessories that were soon outdated when the next group of machines came out that caught my attention. That pissed me off. Perhaps the solution is a hybrid device - half PDA phone, half laptop. Kind of like a docking station that has STANDARD ports allowing me to use peripherals seen on PCs and adding a 2.5" hard disk for items I need to have on hand. When I don't need the HDD or the keyboard, I can pull the other half off and use it as a phone/PDA thing. Makes sense to me.
Now what do we need the PDA for? Really? Stop being so backwards, PDA fan boys!
Stop the brainwash
I have a Sony/Ericsson Z520a phone that I got about a month ago. It includes a crappy camera, some commercials disguised as games (which i deleted immediately), bluetooth support, and some basic PIM funcionality.
Yesterday morning, I was out in the field with a customer, and took a couple quick photos of a room so I could get a good idea of where to set up some equipment. 5 minutes later, another customer called to see if I was available during the afternoon anytime next week. Since I use one of those wireless headset thingies, I was able to keep talking while pulling up my calendar, checking the dates, and ultimately scheduling an appointment. At lunch today, I used the crappy internet access to read some news while i was eating.
Now, I am very aware that the text input on my telephone sucks, the camera sucks, the bluetooth radio is weak, and the battery doesn't last nearly as long as i'd like. But for me, its really nice to have 1 thing in my pocket that I can use for more than one purpose, if the need arises.
The only real complaint that I have is the text input. Its nearly unpossible to enter anything in my calendar unless I have 5 minutes to work through it. I get by by giving the appointment a simple name, such as the initials of the person that called, then giving it a better description on my laptop later. The bad camera, slow internet access, and all the other half-assed features don't bother me, since I use my phone as an Information Management device, not a laptop. Someday I might need to graduate to a full-on PDA, but I can't see ever needing anthing more powerful than a treo.
And by the way, It works pretty good for making telephone calls, too.
So, am I the only one here that finds that stuff useful?
I got an Axim X51v as my first Pocket PC. Had been explicitly holding off for about four years because I do not need a gadget to remind me of appointments, phone numbers and the like. Instead, the things that got me wanting a PDA or similar were:
Interestingly enough, I've found plenty more uses for it - talking through Skype, playing, etc.
Convergence? Connectivity? Convenience? More like compromise to me. Sure, there's the Treo 700, but it's a pared down version of Windows Mobile 5 and a skimpy screen. I'd rather have the choice to use my Motorola V265 to talk (though it certainly does a fair bit more), leaving the Pocket behind when I'm heading for the outdoors or doing home improvement at mom's. I certainly don't want to stick my Pocket to my face to make a phone call (yes, I could use a Bluetooth headset permanently. Oh wait, I have to recharge it). The cell phone has nine months and I've beaten the soul out of it; the Pocket wouldn't have withstood the usage, the places I take the phone, the conditions... And I don't need it to.
Just my two cents... And I honestly wonder if I'll find something similar to it a few years down the line. It seems others are willing to compromise for the sake of convenience.
The revolution will not be televised.
Hi:
And Wikipedia is even worse. It sorts into a column two columns wide.
Why can so many 'tech' writers miss the simple stuff?
PDAs were always basic 'PC' functionality that fits in the pocket.
The older PDA market was based on a simple fact. Portable processing power and storage managed with battery life.
If you play out battery life at the important item, phones are surpassing PDA technology of a couple years ago, and giving you 100% of the functionality. Look at the smartphone from MS even, it is a low overhead OS but you can browse the net with standard browser specifications and even do Remote desktop from your phone into your office PC. One other note on battery life, is the new portable small form factor PC technologies run 3-5hrs, and this is more than most cell phones do now, especially if you are in a call, which sucks the battery 10 times faster than basic PDA operations. It also wasn't that long ago Cell phones had 45min talk times and had to be rechared every 6-8hrs.
As for storage and media storage, Media Players like iPods and from other companies again surpass the PDA capabilities. Even some Phones, like my older Motolora V710 has 8gb storage, more than enough for most basic music libraries and a few movies, video clips and photos.
Processing power is being dominated by the small form factor PCs, like Microsoft and other companies are pushing, that offer desktop OSes on a device that fits in your pocket and again have large storage, but not quite the PDA or Phone Batter life, yet...
The latter of these are the most important. When you can carry your computer in a small form factor, and still have access to a reasonable display and run all your basic computing tools and even new computing tools like VoIP and Cell capabilties on it with a comperable battery life, then THESE devices will be the next PDAs.
Sure PDA technology as we know is over to a degree, but will continue to exist in SmartPhone and other phone technologies and Media Players until the portable PCs can hit the battery life and size needs of basic cell phones and media players.
However when they do hit the battery life and sizes needed for an all day usage in and out of the pocket, PDAs and even PocketPC/Smartphone and other Phone OS technologies will no longer be needed. So that will be the death of PDA OSes...
Microsoft has even realized that the PocketPC/WindowsCE OS is not a long term OS solution, even WindowsXP embedded is already replacing WindowsCE technologies in smart clients and routers and fits on small flash memory.
The PDA is dead, but only if you continue to see a PDA in the OLD model. A tiny computer trying to do the best it can with the hardware available in a small format was what PDAs were.
As both the open source solutions and MS solutions for example can run full OSes on devices that are as small as phone, then that will be the new PDA, but not just a freaking organizer.
People could argure the success of some of the early PDAs were due to the simplistic non-full OS style format and applications, but these same types of applications can run on full OSes as well, and you could use the 'simplified' interface, or switch to your normal apps if you are not on the go. Take the Media Center Interface for an example of a dual 'UI/Interface' model for a single OS.
Both OSX and Windows have good Speech and Handwriting technologies, and Vista will be bringing even a new level of them to the market so they are more common occasional use.
So there is NOTHING a full OS can't do that a PDA can...
is the tricorder. Throw in a whirly sonic medical detector into a PDA and we're all set. Think of the police uses! Instant crackwhore detector. We'd be well on our way to a cashless, drug-free, crime-free police state^W^WFederation of Planets.
Know what I want? Components! Make a variety of displays that are basically thin clients (via X11-over-Bluetooth? RDP? Whatever, just as long as it's the standard). Make a variety of processing units. Make a variety of input devices. Make a variety of speaker/headphone/microphone units. Most importantly, make multiple brands work together seamlessly. Convergence? I want divergence by piecing together the set of interoperable parts that fit the way I want to use them!
In my dream setup, I sit down at a public access point and get my 8" screen and compact keyboard out of my bag. That's it. I'm set up and ready to use it. They both talk wirelessly to the real processor which is squirreled away in my messenger bag and only sees the light of day when I need to recharge it. If a cell or VOIP call comes in, it's automatically transferred to my wireless earpiece.
Us geeks will always have the iPod-sized processing equivalent of an overclocked Celeron, but Joe Businessman can buy a quad-Xeon unit and car battery on wheels to power it. Maybe I'm just going to the grocery store, so I'd only take the 3" touchscreen (so I can mark off my shopping list as I go). Have to give a presentation? Bind to the projector client in the conference room until it's over.
I truly think this is the future. I want a cheap Dell processing box that never leaves my shirt pocket, or beltclip, or whatever. I want a nice Samsung client to display it's output. I want a Happy Hacking portable keyboard for input. See, ever since Palm discontinued the IIIxe, their hasn't been a single model of PDA from any manufacturer that covers all the features I want. Dell might not make as much per individual item by selling the components separately, but I truly believe that they'd make a killing by hawking vast numbers of the smaller pieces. No PC maker that I know of sells monolithic PC-screen-keyboard-mouse desktop units, but that's exactly how they expect you to buy your portable electronics.
Wake up, Apple and Dell! There's a whole untapped market of people who'd love to customize their PDAs, particularly those people who have never used one (start off with a cheap CPU and upgrade it later if you like it). And the thing is that all of the hardware, software, wireless tech, and protocols are in common use that could make this happen today.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I've got a Treo650 (which I love) and it's pretty obvious that this is the form factor things will use. By this, I mean it has a screen as small as you can get away with in PDA/internet applications but is as big as the masses are willing to lug around. 2.5" x 4.5" x 1" is about the limits engineers have to work with from a market standpoint.
I figure the next generation Treo, call it the Treo800, will have all the required checkbox features: bluetooth (headset, modem, keyboard, stereo audio), 3G wireless data, wifi+VoIP, Expansion port (SDIO probably), >128MB of usable static memory, >2Mp digicam and hopefully a bog standard mini-USB port with a multiplatform driver so it acts as an A/V device.
Ultimately, there will be 4 flavors based on two hardware choices and OS: keyboard + small screen vs. large touchscreen + pen input and PalmOS vs Windows. Theoretically we could see a Unix-based product (PalmOS isn't Unix until I can run bash!), maybe from Apple, but I think the user-interface hurdle and the low margins will keep that unlikely until the Chinese or Indians are forced to perfect it in an attempt to avoid licensing an OS.
But whatever you expect to see, expect to see it in a 2.5" x 4.5" x 1" package. Maybe smaller but I doubt it. Clamshell & flip-screen designs will continue to fail in the market until they can fit that form factor without being delicate. Even then I expect them to fail b/c the keyboard will still be too small for the way most people type and the expense of the additonal components will be more than the market will bear.
I've been on slashdot so long I'm starting to get out of touch with the cool stuff if it ain't on slashdot.
Bluetooth headsets would theoretically allow any form factor for a PDA/Phone, even something built into your clothes. (Instead of clipping your phone to your belt, the phone is your belt.)
The other thing I'd like to see is foldable screens/input devices. Still a ways off, but it would certainly be nice to have a bigger screen when I wanted it that I could just fold up and stuff in my pocket.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
damn straight PDAs have changed. Back in my day, if a policeman caught you so much as holding hands with your girl in a public place, you'd be shot on sight. These days people can fornicate in the bushes and display affection publicly all willy nilly, and no one does a damn thing about it. Now get off my lawn!
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
I remember reading that back when the first Palm Pilot was being developed, there was a mantra among the developers to the effect that "If it doesn't fit in my pocket, it won't be in my pocket."
;-)
This is why I'd predict that the "smartphone" will win over the "PDA". The gadgets that are being marketed as PDAs now mostly are physically too large for the typical shirt pocket.
My wife even has a Treo, but she mostly leaves it home on the desk, because it's "too big", and carries a tiny cell phone that's just a phone. The Treo doesn't get used much, except for the few games she has loaded. (She loves the Sudoku puzzles.
For several years, I had a Kyocera smartphone, which I used a lot as both phone and PDA. At least I did, until it lost its calendar, and when I tried to reload from backup, it "backed up" its (empty) calendar, wiping out the backup. So I went back to a paper pocket calendar, which is more powerful anyway.
When it started dying, due to a company subsidy I got a CrackBerry. It also fits in my pocket, and is a fairly good phone, but otherwise not too useful. Now that I don't work there any more, and pay for it myself, I find that it's not worth the money. If you're not on an Outlook email system, its email is fairly cruddy and difficult to use. Its browsers are all cruddy, not much better than the initial Mosaic release. And our attempts to use it as a modem all came to naught. (Yeah, the salesmen said it would work, but after the company signed the deal and gave us developers the BBs, we found that RIM's CS people couldn't be bothered to answer our question.) So much for the idea that it would get our laptops connected where there was no wifi.
Frankly, the things are mostly a waste of money, unless you have one with software tailored for the one job you need it for.
I keep hoping the handhelds.org people will come up with a way to do a pocket-size gadget that does GSM/GPRS/wifi and can also talk IP across a USB and/or Bluetooth link. With linux on board, including ssh, I could program the rest of the stuff myself, and we won't have to deal with the obtruction from the phone companies who insist on locking us out of the most useful stuff.
Yeah, I know; I'm dreaming. There's no way the US phone companies will allow a pipsqueak like me to use "their" infrastructure for my own development purposes.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
When it died, I bought an inexpensive cell phone that had a datebook and stored a little more information in the phone book. The only thing I miss about the Zire is that it was easier to type things in.
No, I will not work for your startup
I agree that the author got the wrong idea about "PDA". "PDA" is not simply a device to keep you organized anymore. It is now a device with multimedia capacity and connectivity, and I believe the trend will continue. Higher end PDAs now have equivalant screen and sound quality to portable media player, and it can play more formats than say iPods. As for connectivity, with built-in bluetooth, you can easily connect your PDA to the internet through your cell phone data-plan (without even taking your cell phone out). With a bluetooth headset, you can make calls through your PDA without even taking your cell phone out either. The advantage compared to smartphone is, with the rapid change in cell phone technology (especially 3G), we can just switch the cell phone or cell phone provider whenever we want and keep our PDA for a longer time, and not neccessarily get "locked up" by a single provider or technology. I believe the future is the opposite of what the author suggested. PDA will be the main tool for communication, and "cell phone for PDA" will be developed. The specialized "cell phone" will be just a "transmitter" -- a screen might not even been neccessary, because all you need is connectivity for bluetooth to hookup with your PDA.
Nothing's "on the verge of dying" or anything here, really. Basically every handheld device is moving slightly towards a central idealistic box which we could call, the SmartPDApocketPhone or, SPPP.
The SPPP is basically a:
PDA with more power and a GSM phone plugin
or
A phone with morepower and a touchscreen added
or
A miniaturized computer stripped of some functionalities, but added a touchscreen and a GSM phone plugin.
Sooooo all in all, every device is slowly becoming another. The phone is dead by the way. Yeah, anyone tried to buy a phone that is just, well, a phone? You can't. You can only buy phones with pda/cameras/games/internet on it.
It's all just slightly different devices merging into what the consumer wants. The original pda platform and the original phone platform and every other original platform are all dying, and they'll all become a new, centralized handheld system.
phone is your belt eh? Just think what that would do to your sperm count... Don't want geeks reproducing anyway do they..
I want a Palm IIIxe with a higher res screen, optional wifi and INSANE BATTERY LIFE.
I don't care about colour, hard drives, playing video or mp3s.
I do care about connectivity and portability.
A portable device with an hour and a half battery life isn't very portable.
--- Do you believe in the day?
Sure, the calendar is useful, the address book is more useful (I've had three incompatible phones in the time that I've had my Palm), but text is my killer app.
Also useful is the little Palm Pix gadget that I can carry along. I bought it on the clearance table at Staples for fifteen bucks (Yes, I'm a technological bottom feeder). It's essentially an Instamatic, but I can take twenty-five photos before I have to off-load them, and I can sync them to my computer without paying through the nose to my phone company.
Show me a phone that can handle text as well as the Palm, and I'll consider switching, maybe. It's not unusual lto find me typing in my Palm with my full-size Think Outside keyboard, listening to my 4th gen iPod, and occasionally talking on my phone. I can't imagine a "convergence" device that would let me do that as well as my low-budget tech.
AK
I have always thought that, in the future, the PDA would be a great with a voice interface. Obviously, once it actually works reliably. It would be trained to just your voice, and could issue remote control codes to other appliances as well.
With a little cleverness, it could also serve as a future language translator, converting from your language (or a simplified pidgeon version for ease of translation) to a universal one in IR or bluetooth, or what-have-you, and translating back from that inbetween code to your language again. Thus, anyone could talk to anyone, providing they have those two functions on their end.
Don't hold your breath, that's for sure.
I have had my fair share of PDAs use over the years. I started with a Handspring then to a Toshiba e335 and finally an Axim v50 (great PDA when it does not lock up). I am currently an intern working at a hospital. When I was in medical school during my second year I saw a few of first year students come into class with PDAs. I asked them why they bought their PDA prior to school. They told me that when they interviewed for admission they went to church during their stay and saw all the medical students with their PDAs reading scriptures, etc.. They figured that everyone at school had a PDA and used them extensively throughout the week. What they failed to realize was that was the only time most of us used our PDA during the week was at church. Our schedule was so regimented and predictable that there was no need for an organizer. Also most of the textbooks and references for the first two years are easier to read from the actual book or a notebook computer. They all thought that everyone used PDAs but they did not.
When I got into my clinical rotations my school promised a PDA based log book system when we started. The system went live finally after I graduated. The system is so cumbersome and difficult to use that no one uses it. Everyone thought that point of care data entry would be easy and more convenient but that turned out not to be the case. I have since learned that large amounts of data input is better done on a computer, not a PDA.
The reference material I use on my PDA works pretty good. The differential diagnosis, 5 minute clinical consult, and other material have really helped me out. But my problem is that I still have to carry my pocketbook material with me for back up. Also my pocket material allow me to search different information faster. For example if I look up an ace inhibitor (a blood pressure medication) I can look up every drug in the class very quickly with my book but on my PDA that is difficult. The problem with the PDA is that the information is so variable in it presentation on different programs. I have to use two different clinical consult programs to get the information I need on certain diseases. Of course that is a programming issue but good, solid PDA programs are difficult to find (in my opinion). I frequently search out a web based computers to look information up.
I still have faith in the PDAs. They have saved me (or my patients) from major screw ups. The amount of information available is too much to remember for one person. Healthcare providers will have to be able to integrate health information into the point of care system. It would be so nice to be able to look up a drug and cross reference it with the patient's drug plan. My current program does that but none of the drug plan for my patients are in the system currently. Stuff like that is possible but is not done because a multitude of issue not related to the actual technology to do so. After all the prescription insurance plans do not want you to easily pick out medications for our patients. The more difficult it is the more they hope you just give up or just guess. BTW the Plan D is a mini disaster, very poorly executed.
Just my two cents
My Treo 650 does all I want, and technically it runs Palm PDA applications.
I still have my calendar, my contacts list, my todos and my memos.
But now I can make calls, take pics and movies, play games, listen to mp3s, edit word files, read ebooks and pdfs.
And the battery life is great. And it has a keyboard, so no graphiti. I thought I would miss it, but I dont. I still use the stylus for some stuff, but I don't really need to.
Whatever you call it, we now have convergence. Finally. It can be improved, but it works and it mostly works ok.
Sure, I want 30 GB, wifi, 800x600 screen, and wireless stereo headphones, but that will come.
I recently did some searching to find a PDA to replace my old Handspring Visor Deluxe.
Unfortunately I was disappointed to find that none of the newer models, Palm or Pocket PC, use regular AAA batteries anymore. Rechargeable is supposed to be more convenient, but I like my battery life to be measured in weeks, not days or hours. I can easily go 4-5 weeks between battery changes with my Visor, but with one of the new color PDAs I'm afraid this would be cut much shorter.
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I like the grayscale screen. It doesn't drain the batteries quickly, and is quite legible even in bright sunlight.
Hopefully there will be some breakthrough battery technology soon, because right now it sucks. In my ideal world, the ipod, cell phone, and PDA would all go for several weeks without needing a charge.
I'm not sure why people differentiate the latest wave of smartphones from a PDA. I really see the PDA as killing the standard cellular phone, and not the reverse. When 95% of a computers functionality and software is dedicated to the PDA operations, it is a PDA. The Treo 650 for instance is a Palm OS PDA with a radio, and not the reverse. All phones that run Windows Mobile 2005 and have a touch screen are PDA's with a phone. the "smartphone" version of Windows Mobile is stripped down, but still the majority of the software is dedicated to the PDA operating system. Phone operations on a pda are a small set of 3 or 4 libraries and a dialer application.
You might as well say the microcomputer is dead and being replaced by microcomputers. It makes as much sense as saying the PDA is dead. Or how about saying the PDA is dead and being replaced by the networkable handheld- which is a PDA with a network card, the network card of course being a radio, not dissimilar from the radio in a cellular phone.
If you think that PDA's are dead, please avoid trying to become a technologist because you kind of missed the forest for the trees. Go split hairs elsewhere. smartphone=pda+radio. Just because they are soldered together doesn't make it a different device.
Call me jaded, but I've been seeing 'The PDA market is going to die soon' articles for the last decade. There's always going to be a niche for the PDA (and let's be honest, it's never been anything but a niche market anyway).
I have a verixon treo 650 and I can install whatever on it.
What is so crappy about the treo phone? Speaker is not great, but it works.
What is crappy about the treo PDA? It runs the basic Palm PDA apps I need, calendar, contacts, memos,todo. I can use the stylus to control it or the rocker and keyboard.
Try the treo, it works pretty well. It could be better in area, but it is good enough and converged...
What is a PDA? What is a UMPC? Do we measure their capabilities, or their size, or what? And if you build a PDA in terms of size and capability, but it also is a phone, what do you call it? "Smartphone" seems catchy... so what if you take a UMPC form-factor and add videoconferencing or VOIP or something that makes it an oversized smartphone? Call it gigaphone or something?
"Tricorder," perhaps?
-- My Weblog.
What is so crap about the Treo? You don't like the single piece design? Is it awkward for you? I personally hate clamshell designs since they are apt to break.
Is the treo too big? For what it does, it is a great size.
Don't like holding it to your head? Get a BT headset or corded earpiece and mics.
PS- I love my treo, if you couldn't tell.
The only thing wrong with the Treo is precisely your valid criticism that the cellular providers limit its networking capabilities. However the latest Treo (the 700w) does support wifi cards. As soon as the 700p comes out (the PalmOS version) no doubt a goodly number of Palm afficionados who own Palm wifi cards will upgrade and start happily getting online with their Treo phones.
As for "crippled bluetooth", it's not clear what you mean. I use my Nokia 6600 all the time to get my Palm Tungsten online via bluetooth, on the T-Mobile phone network. It would be great to combine these two devices into one, but this works and it's a lot better than nothing. I am psyched about the idea of a 1 megapixel camera included with the phone. I don't always carry my digital camera with me and it would be a great thing to have. When the 700p comes out it's going to be one sweet, tempting convergence device, particularly if they allow dialup networking finally.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Disclaimer: I did not RTFA
However, I am currently in the market for a PDA for my mother to travel with, for 3 months, to Africa and Europe. She has just bought a nice new Digital camera with a 1GB SD card in it.
Here's why PDAs are important: SIZE AND WEIGHT!
For a 3-month trip, for a 70-year old woman every single gram of weight is important. A laptop is simply out of the question, as she'd throw the thing in the rubbish after 3 weeks, I'm sure.
What she needs is a device with the following attributes:
1) Small
2) Light
3) colour screen of at least half VGA resolution
4) hand writing recognition
5) WiFi
6) Bluetooth
7) At least 2GB of storage
9) Email
10) Web surfing
11) MP3 player
12) Diary/Blog functionality
13) SD card reader
14) Image slideshow
15) Screen orientation flip
16) Fast recharge
17) At least 6 hours battery life
18) Ability to open most "common" file formats: PDF, Word, Excel etc.
19) Voice recorder
Of lesser importance, and able to be performed by a different device are
1) Very small and light, yet full size keyboard
2) Ability to dial-up to the Internet via GSM or Analog cellular connection.
features which are currently not available but would be desirable:
1) Projector, such that the cigarette-packet size object can create a screen of 19" (or larger) size at resolution of at least 1280 mode.
2) Biometric security: finger print enables device after powerup.
3) User swappable battery - or preferably, methanol based fuel-cell.
Currently, I am leaning towards the PalmOne "LifeDrive" with 4GB of disc space, and the iTech Virtual Keyboard, which uses a low power laser to project the KB onto a surface.
I feel that these two devices, along with a bluetooth-enabled GSM cell phone (which she already has), coupled with the WiFi and Bluetooth offer a traveller unparalleled connectivity and productivity at a very low "footprint". When space and weight are considered, the PDA definitely has a niche, but in the future, as fuel-cells allow faster processors, it's only a matter of time til the PDA is a full-featured PC, with USB2.0, firewire, built-in cellphone, projector, and incorporates a VKB - all in a single device.
Can I order mine now please?
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
My first thought - will linux run on it? And it it seems so/
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
based on the difference between what I paid, and what you are looking at, I'd say either you looked at prices a few months ago or your retailer is ripping you off...
The stupidity of the wireless companies is precisely why I like the Nokia 770- you can de-couple your PDA from the cell phone, and more importantly the cell phone companies.
I am surprised that I haven't found any device that is just a portable gprs bluetooth gateway- no screen, no voice, no keypad. Hell, who actually even needs a phone number then...
It's harder to keep the cell providers on their toes in the US because there aren't any multi-protocol phones with "universal" sim cards, but elsewhere it is nice to get the phone you want (for about the same price and without a contract), and switch between pre-pay providers at will.
Online services like http://google.calendar.com/ make carrying personal info less important.
Be heard || Be herd
...I think I just described an ipod ...
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
As for which is most useful for me, it's a tossup between the ability to stick an entire library in my pocket and the ability to take notes that not only do I not have to decipher afterwards, but sync them straight into my Linux box. Unfortunately, Informit hasn't published my how-to article yet, all I can say is to check the site every few days, it should be out Real Soon Now.
Plus, of course, if it is one of those middle-of-the-night inspirations, I don't have to turn on a light and look for a pen and paper, just grab the PDA and start writing on the display with my fingernail. Try and do that with a 'smart' cellphone.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Battary life is now counted in minutes on these things not days or weeks! They cost stupid money and it makes more sence based on battery life + cost to buy a cheap laptop as you get way more bang for your book.
You want one to cost no more then $200 with 4GB storage, screen large enough to play movies, last 3 days without recharge i.e. a weekend away. Small, light, sturidy. has USB to other devices not just to a PC. WiFi + Cell Phone + Skype Phone. Easy to develop for, (i.e. free SDK) Palm Pilots were the bomb to code. And that means you could get a small games device, but nothing to powerful, maybe SNES standard (sprite based, i.e. not 3D).
I'd buy one of them, heck that's what Sony should do with the PSP2 it would be great as it's about the right size for all of the above (although you would want 3d GFX in that case) + the fact it was a phone would be liker killer, then with the WiFi Video confrencing for kids... it would be nutz
So... My PDA outlook: Bad. I wont be needing a cell phone, small laptop, Palm Pilot, Pocket PC, etc, and I highly doubt I will be taking part in any Public Displays of Affection either.
Now if only they did a smart PDA style device with quick access to the C++ libraries, or PHP documentation etc, I could fix any late night questions right from bed.
</humor attempt>
Scott Swezey
Anyone with any forsight could see that all these gadgets are beginning to have overlapping functionality. With this in mind, one can presume that in the future, all the functions of mobile devices (Wifi, bluetooth, telephone, data storage and processing, etc..) will be incorperated into one device for on the go. This device will compliment our "at-home" device allowing use to reach back to this device to utilize it's capabilities on the go. Eventually we will have just the mobile device and the home device.
The PDA will never die, not as long as Jack Bauer's alive and fighting terrorists. Without it, what would Chloe upload all his essential maps, blueprints and realtime satellite imagery to?
You must think in Russian.
I think the Treo is too thick. I don't like the external antenna, as it often catches on things as I pull it in and out of my bag or coat pocket. I don't care for how small the buttons are when you are trying to quickly dial a number in a situation, like being on a train, or walking down the street. During long conversations it gets very hot against your ear. I don't like that there is nothing to protect the screen without putting it in a case that makes it even harder to use when you need to answer a call quickly. Also, I found that oddly enough all the PDA-style smartphones I tried (Blackberry, Sidekick, Treo) were all very hard to use as a phone walking down a busy street with a lot of traffic. Either I couldn't hear the person I was talking to because the volume was really low if you didn't have it by your ear just right, or they couldn't hear me over the background noise, or neither of us could hear anything because of all the wind noise the mic was picking up, or something. I haven't had those problems with any of the flip phones I have used.
To give you an idea, the Motorola RAZR is my idea of the perfect phone. Big buttons, a couple days of battery life with moderate use, slim enough to fit in any pocket, good reception and sound quality, easily replaceable battery so that I can have an extra in my bag and quickly swap them.
It is true that in theory, a Bluetooth headset (or any headset for that matter) should somewhat mitigate the ergonomics of the phone. However in practice it (at least for me) doesn't work that way. I don't want to walk around all day with a headset in my ear. I think it is uncomfortable, looks kind of dumb, and isn't really all that practical. So, a headset just means an annoying two-step process. When the phone starts ringing, I have to pull it out, and look to see who is calling, then if I want to answer it, I have to start digging around for my headset, get it in my ear, adjust it, and then answer the call. I find that much more annoying than just looking at the external display on my phone, and if I want to answer it, just open the phone, put it to my ear, and start talking. If it looks like it is going to be a long call, then I will tell them to hang on a second while I switch to the headphone. However when I am walking down a busy street, and someone is just calling to check if I am running late or not, it is nice to just flip open the phone, talk to them close the phone, and slip it back in my pocket.
On the other side, I think that the Treo has too small a screen to make an optimal PDA, and the size makes the keyboard so small that a big guy like me (I am 6' 4" with pretty big hands) has a bit of a hard time getting any better data entry from the tiny keyboard than I would from handwriting recognition.
The Treo is very well designed for what it is, which is a combo unit. However I think that a phone/PDA combo works about as well as a gas/electric hybrid SUV.
Sperm count shouldn't be a problem if you buy the matching mp3 player/lead cod piece combination device.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
...Doesn't anyone who designs these things have this kind of inspiration?
Smartphones, PDA's, UMPC's, small notebooks are more or less all the same except for the physical size. Smartphones have to fit into a single hand but have a rather limited display and input is quite difficult. PDA's have to fit into a pocket (max. 160x90 mm) but have a reasonable sized display and a pen for input. UMPC's and small notebooks fit into a suitcase so have a rather large display and possibly a keyboard.
So PDA's could have a market if vendors keep this size limits in mind. To distinct them from smartphones they need to have a display as large as possible while still fitting into a pocket. So I guess a 5 1/2 or even a 6 inch display is a must. On the other side a large display drives off the UMPC. And if the format follows the 16x9 factor a PDA might be used for mobile TV.
There are other features which have to be kept in mind. USB 2.0, Bluetooth and WLAN connections are a must. A memory card slot (most probably an SD-card) is a must. An MP3- and OGG-player are so convenient it shouldn't be left out. And since technology is changing so fast a CF-card slot would be a perfect match. So you could easily add a GPS module, a DVB-H TV module, GSM handy module (Bluetooth headset) or what ever is poping up to the PDA.
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
Since this thread is a collection of conjecture, I'll plow right in. I think clearly RIM has it dead on with the trajectory of its BlackBerry devices. They are tunned primarily to act excel in PIM functionality. I dont think a NON network connected (that means smartphone) device has any future.
The PDA idea is a dead end -- its life blood is non-regualar connections to its master (PC) to recieve updates in data. Isnt life with a constant network connection much more appealing?
Look at RIM's 7100 Series for the most perfect implementation of a Smartphone to date.
The future of the PDA is bright as long as it is also a phone and mp3 player.
If you want battery life then look at the 14" iBook. It's almost as small as the 12", which makes it an excellent travel computer, but the chasis is large enough to take the next sized battery which pushes 6 hours.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I carry my PDA in my jeans/trouser pocket. It's more wide and tall that it is thick and to be honest it's more confortable than my last traditionally shaped mobile. It's not for everyone though.
WRT to your desire for a device that has all of the connectivity and allows IP forwarding and the like...I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't already out there. They have complete IP stacks, so it's just a matter of tweaking the routing. They can already ip-forward over dialup modem via Bluetooth, so it's doable. Just needs the right hacker to work on it.
I use several pieces of "personal electronics" (shying away from the moniker "PDA").
- A simple cell phone. It does have a pretense of "games", which are horrible, and a "phone book", which is also horrible. I wanted something that would have a long battery life, and would be reliable, and did NOT have a camera (as I go to secure sites a lot).
- A "PDA". Specifically, a Palm m505. I have an advanced calculator program (EasyCalc), and use it for contacts, datebook, calculations, limited data entry, and puzzle games. I have an 802.11b adaptor for it, and a keyboard that I occasionally take and use.
- A clock. On my keychain. Tells times, and has an easy to set countdown alarm. Three button interface, very easy to use, and vital to me.
- An MP3 player. 128MB unit with "USB drive" capability. Dirt cheap, and works great as a player and USB drive.
I like the separation of the physical components. Yes, it may seem inconvenient, but... being able to SEE and manipulate contact information while talking on the phone is important to me (example: on the phone: "Oh, it's your birthday today. How about a drink tonight?" On the m505: mark a birthday for the person, for next year (send a card), check schedule and set an appointment). Having my reminder alarm go off while I'm so engaged is also important. Being able to share my USB drive (sneaker-net) at a job site while not loosing the ability to take calls is critical. I *won't* give someone my PDA: but they can have the USB player.
I don't want the phone to be the "PDA" and the USB drive, and I always need time tracking.
At some point I guess I will just have to adjust my style of working (maybe start wearing a wrist watch again, and go back to paper time records, and an egg-timer). Possibly even two phones (one as a "share resource", and one for incoming calls). Who knows? Right now, though, I'm happy.
And the m505 ROCKS.
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
YES! A smartphone IS a PDA
My beef w/ the treo is it's not clamshell.
I don't NEED a frickin' thumboard.
Samsung had a decent idea but the hardware had some relibility issues, and was a bit too thick despite that. And the phone/palm integration wsa pure crap...I would have preferred them be totally segregated functions, w/ the phone having its own phonebook, rather than the half-assed integration they tried.
So, back to my ancient(ish) Sony Clie and seperate phone. If I could code my own basic PDA functionality on the phone and have it at all integrated (w/o waiting for Java sandbox to initialize) I'd just use the phone...my PDA needs aren't huge, mostly TODOs, light memos, and datebook, but the UI makes *very* poor use of the already scarce A/V possibilities that the phone does offer.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Your description sounds a lot like what I call a "storage-centered system." Imagine if you could carry ALL your data with you and interface to it via a collection of devices. If you were in front a a giant screen, that could be your display. If you had a full keyboard available, that could be your input device. If you sat down in an airplane you'd fold down the keyboard and use the seatback screen. All would use your personal database as the "center" of the system and would pick up where you left off the last time your modified the state.
Hey! Idiots! Guess what? The PDA has morphed into this device called a smartphone.
The folks at Handspring saw the writing on the wall years ago... the standalone PDA has no future. It's the worst of all worlds: not enough power to replace a general-purpose computer, limited communications channels without a cell phone interface, and clumsy "integration" (ever used a PDA to dial a Bluetooth phone? Yeah. Me neither).
The word "smartphone" is a huge disservice to the world of the PDA. Every smartphone is, really, a PDA with a phone taped on the side.
Sun was right. The Network is the Computer. What makes smartphones such handy gadgets is the integration of PDA features into the very device you are going to be using to communicate. It just makes sense.
When my old Palm m515 died lsat year, my employer was willing to pay for a replacement PDA. They would not have paid for a smartphone with PDA functionality. So, instead of buying a Treo, I bought a Tungsten. Next time around, in a couple of years, if not sooner, a smartphone may be my only option.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
Granted there are many benefits in a PowerBook, but I've found that the 12" iBook I had got close to 5 hours per charge for me. 14" probably is pushing it as far as the size requirements, but the 12" is a nice size for travel.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
One of the issues with being a USB host is that PDAs generally don't have the battery capacity to supply USB power. The Nokia 770 (great device BTW), for example, can act as a USB host but will only work with powered peripherals (which excludes thumb drives) unless you use a powered hub in the middle.
Obviously having to lug around a powered hub or search for a wall socket for your peripherals limits the usefulness somewhat. (Although there is a niche of battery-powered USB hubs.)
At my desk right now, I'm using a Dell computer, ViewSonic monitor, cheap speakers, IBM Model M keyboard, and Microsoft trackball. I want that kind of freedom with my portables, and I think the first company that can give it to me will own fortunes.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Anybody who thinks PDA's are useless, antiquated toys has obviously never used a cxx00/6000 model Zaurus running pdaxrom or Openzaurus. I struggle to think of something I could do on my desktop PC that I couldn't do on my c3000. In fact, the only tasks I would avoid doing on the Z are big compiles (not that I've ever needed to compile a program for my Z thanks to the package managers and a large selection of free software) and video conversion or any other heavy-duty graphics work. It plays divx and xvid great though and the clamshell Zaurii are my fave computer since the almighty Amiga.
:p
The only thing I've seen that can compete with the latest Zaurii is the HTC universal, but Linux (openembedded) is still some way off being stable, even useable, on the HTC and the hardware build quality/ feel is not as good as the Z so I'm not tempted to switch.
Hopefully there will be a company out there that realises there is a market for a good power PDA, something like the HTC uni but with
* ARM Cortex-A8 CPU, 1ghz
* Intel 2700 graphics accelerator (or better) w/ VGA out
* 128MB or more RAM
* USB2 OTG
* At least 8GB integrated microdrive (or 4GB flash drive maybe)
* Openembedded linux as standard w/ GPE, Abiword, Gnumeric, minimo etc. pre-installed
instead
I'd buy 5!
This discussion is pointless.
How can the PDA be supplanted by the UMPC when the UMPC is nothing but a vapourware "dream" PDA? in fact, the PDA is the direct ancestor of the UMPC - or has everyone forgotton that the Sharp 3000 and the HP 95/100/200/700 LX "Pocket PCs" ever existed?
Likewise, how can the PDA be supplanted by smartphones, when smartphones are PDAs with one more function bolted onto them?
What does replace PDAs will come out of the convergence of bigger ideas than either of the above. (I'm guessing that somebody will finally realize that fast and cheap wireless networking coupled with VNC will mean that you can carry your home or office PC with you, and not have to cultivate yet another computing environment jsut for the sake of portability.)
Yes, it was months ago. Just makes my point even MORE valid about devices that don't offer much flash.
I had a treo 650, and dumped it. The phone quality sucks. The speaker is not as good as a traditional cell phone, and neither is the mic. Maybe it's the sound processing chip - who knows. I just know for a fact that sound quality is not as good as my motorola phone. Furthermore, the treo had a LOT more dropouts and did not work nearly as well in low-signal areas as my moto. The screen keypad on the treo ALSO sucks compared to a standard phone.
As a PDA, the screen is way too small, the keyboard sucks, and it doesn't NEARLY have enough memory.
As for bluetooth, Verizon cripples bluetooth on it's phones / PDAs. It no workie as a modem unless you go through the back door codes to re-enable it, and may many people have reported getting their service suspended for using their phone as a modem (bluetooth or otherwise.) Fuck that.