The Evolving Wireless Device
from the what-do-people-need? dept
The wireless device world is getting more and more complicated to figure out. One thing is clear: simple paging is going away, quickly. However, do people want everthing-in-one devices like the Handspring's Treo or Danger's Hiptop - or are they happy with their specialized devices for special situations. Palm is betting on the latter with the introduction of their new i705 wireless handheld which doesn't do voice access. RIM is moving in the other direction as they get ready to add voice to their devices. I like the idea of an all-in-one device - but I'm not so sure about the execution. The main problems I see with these combo devices are that (1) they will seem too expensive for someone who is really just focused on one feature and (2) they will do many features poorly and none particularly well. For instance, the Hiptop looks like it will be a very cool device for remotely surfing the web and doing email - but it might not be a very good mobile phone. What sort of tradeoffs are people willing to make?
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idea
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Re: idea
Maybe some blue-tooth enabled device which you could have a remote ear-piece separate from the screen...
The biggest problem with today's PDAs stem from the size problem: people want something small enough to be easily portable, but yet much larger when they are actually using it. It seems to me that a device like the global from Earth Final Conflict which expands to show the full screen would be the best bet... but screens that are that malleable aren't available yet
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Re: idea
But maybe if it were lightweight enough, PDA/phones could be embedding in hats...?
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