PocketMatrix

Just reading this article over on PocketPCThoughts . I began to wonder what the community here thought of the debate.

The more I think about it, the more I feel torn. On one hand, having a phone with all the basic PIM features, plus some multimedia features, would be great. One less thing to carry around. On the other, I like the fact that I have such a powerful versitile device that fits in my hand (PocketPC). What are your thoughts? Where is this all headed?

I definatly need both.

Are they? I'm in the Mobile industry and i've seen many smartphones which have larger than average screens, but not PPC sized. Obviously i'm excluding the PPC-derived devices, but the Treo, Z100, Cosmo, etc are all lacking somewhat in screen dimensions. I'm sure that phones will get past the small phone-big screen problem, but until then i'd prefer to keep the devices seperate for portability reasons. BTW the O2 XDA looks phat, though! I held an actual model today, and it is seriously impressive!!

If the screen are the same size I would hate to see how big these phones are...

All those devices are large. Even though a lot of them have reduced-size screens, they are still generally as large as a PPC. The smallest of the devices, the Z100, is still much too large, while the Texas Instruments device is a similar size to a PPC - a thinner width but a taller height. It's also interesting to note that, although they share similar overall dimensions, they both still have smaller screens. BTW I never said that the screens were the same size, if that's what you understood from my post.

I saw those smartphones at a Trade show in January, as well as a couple of even more impressive models. However, i still say that i will stick to using 2 devices, until they make a small phone with a large screen. I think the Nokia 7650 is a step in the right-direction: A large-ish screen on the face, with a slide-down keypad from the back. And the digital camera is one helluva bonus!!

T1 - I was replying to Moose. No worries.

Ohh! Makes a helluva lot more sense now!

Also, many of the new devices are simply PPCs with extra phone hardware. I'm really not sure if that's even a good idea, considering the poor battery life that PPCs have already. The first type of PPC/mobile phone hybrids got around that problem by using a greyscale screen, but the new ones (xda, 928, sx45, etc) all use colour screens. BTW Just gotta mention again how phat the O2 xda is! Trust me, you'll see what i mean when you pick it up... You'll feel to just sell whatever ppc you currently own and buy it!

Moose, where did you get this information?

Smartphones do not record every phonecall. They are capable of recording calls at will though, just like most high-end phones are capable of now. Also, they are not capable of converting speech-to-text yet, as this is still a fairly cpu-intensive process. I'm sure that software will be available at some point in the future, but it seems unlikely at the current time due to the cpu requirements and the fact that the low sample quality of the phone call would make it even harder. Also, to my knowledge, there is no software available yet to allow you to do this on PPC2K devices.

I run a phone shop and often get to sample and preview phones before their release. All the devices i've seen so far haven't impressed me yet, the best being only glorified PPCs. The O2 XDA is the only smartphone that really appeals, but that's more for it's looks. I believe this market is in its infancy and right now the industry is just trying to release first-generation devices to take advantage of the hype surrounding 'smartphones'. In a year or so, i think we will see more feasible devices (better battery life, size, weight, integration). I mean, has anyone seen the 3G phones that are starting to appear in Japan? THAT'S where mobile technology is going!