I recently swapped my trusty old Nokia N95 for a shiny new HTC Magic running Android. Android is closely tied to many of Googles services (mail, calendars, contacts) and within the remit of those I can either edit on the phone screen or login at any convenient computer with a net connection and make use of the bigger screen and keyboard. It's all automatically and pretty much instantly synchronised with the phone through any available pre-configured or open wifi point or 3g/gprs.
As a long time lurker here I know there are mixed feelings about trusting your data to Googles servers but the practical day to day benefits for me are great. As you describe above, the device itself is frankly completely replaceable. If I lose or break it, I can pick up another one (lets imagine away the insurance business for a second), sign in, and I'm back to where I was. Thanks to Android market I can quickly replace all my software too.
I keep fairly up to date on mobile tech and I read a lot of talk about programs to do push email, exchange servers, outlook syncing etc. but I'm not a corporate worker, I don't have the backing of a company IT department, it's just my personal phone and my personal data so having that seamless sync experience and the choice to use any handy browser to interact with the most important stuff on my phone is quite a step up.
The N95 was a brilliant handset and was (potentially) capable of so much, but it suffered from a badly outdated interface and very random and spotty software support. It did raise the bar for hardware specs when it came out, in much the same way that the iphone has raised it for the user interface and overall experience. Both of them forced other manufacturers to respond. I feel that Android/Google is/are raising the stakes for connectedness and taking us a big step closer to the future you describe.
I'm very much looking forward to seeing how it develops.
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It may not be such a far future as you imagine.
I recently swapped my trusty old Nokia N95 for a shiny new HTC Magic running Android. Android is closely tied to many of Googles services (mail, calendars, contacts) and within the remit of those I can either edit on the phone screen or login at any convenient computer with a net connection and make use of the bigger screen and keyboard. It's all automatically and pretty much instantly synchronised with the phone through any available pre-configured or open wifi point or 3g/gprs.
As a long time lurker here I know there are mixed feelings about trusting your data to Googles servers but the practical day to day benefits for me are great. As you describe above, the device itself is frankly completely replaceable. If I lose or break it, I can pick up another one (lets imagine away the insurance business for a second), sign in, and I'm back to where I was. Thanks to Android market I can quickly replace all my software too.
I keep fairly up to date on mobile tech and I read a lot of talk about programs to do push email, exchange servers, outlook syncing etc. but I'm not a corporate worker, I don't have the backing of a company IT department, it's just my personal phone and my personal data so having that seamless sync experience and the choice to use any handy browser to interact with the most important stuff on my phone is quite a step up.
The N95 was a brilliant handset and was (potentially) capable of so much, but it suffered from a badly outdated interface and very random and spotty software support. It did raise the bar for hardware specs when it came out, in much the same way that the iphone has raised it for the user interface and overall experience. Both of them forced other manufacturers to respond. I feel that Android/Google is/are raising the stakes for connectedness and taking us a big step closer to the future you describe.
I'm very much looking forward to seeing how it develops.