A few years back the iPhone was launched. The one key thing that stood out to me (and what I thought made it an appealing device to some one) was that is was like a Swiss army knife. It did just about anything you could want in one handheld device. You had a decent-ish mp3 player, a camera, apps that allowed you do to a lot, a web browser that actually gave you proper access to pages and portable games on the go. Now in 2011 things seemed to have gone backwards.
Where the idea that you could have one device that could do everything was it now seems you need to have a different gadget for every area of your life. It’s just like it was before. Now you need your smart phone, a tablet and a home computer, a laptop and a TV media device roughly costing you nearly £2000 (if you go down the Apple route). Rather than one Swiss army knife you now have 5. The problem with a Swiss army knife is that if you want a device that does something great you need a dedicated device. A Swiss army knife has a can opener on it but have you ever tried to open a can with one? You’ll get there eventually but you waste so much time getting to that point. Swiss army knives can’t have the lasted technology, it just want slim down enough in order cram in everything.
Rather than having 5 jack of all trade, master of none devices why don’t we just go back to 5 devices that are masters of their area. I picked up a digital camera before Christmas last year. It wasn’t expensive (about £60), it’s small a portable and you can record video as well. It’s no SLR camera but if you compare the pictures on it to those of any phone I’ve seen, it’s just in a different class. It’s the same issue with music devices. Phones (and even iPods) have never been known for their sound quality, they’re not great for plugging into larger music systems and the space is very limited. There isn’t a phone in existence that I can fit all the music from my iPod on to (around 40-50 GB and going up). Games have the same problem. My PSP currently holds 16GB on the console and another 8GB on a memory card and there are games I don’t have room for. Quite simply many of these games don’t work on phones or touch screen devices, they weren’t designed for it. The cost of the individual devices would come in at less than the 5 I mentioned earlier.
In our desperate need to have everything instantly at a touch of a button we have water down what the devices were designed for and how good they can be. Don’t forget that you have one battery running all of these devices rather than a dedicated battery for each one. It runs out and you lose your camera, games, music, internet… I can’t believe how many people I see now with their phones that spend most of their time plugged in. Is really a full “mobile” phone if you keep needing to plug it in.
Everyone has different needs and will be able to compromise in some areas. The camera I bought wasn’t for me, I’m fairly happy with the one on my phone as I don’t take pictures on it that much but even 12 rows from the front at a gig the phone’s camera just didn’t cut it. I’ll stick with my iPod and PSP until someone releases a handheld with buttons, great games, decent music control and a 1TB hard drive in it and I’ll keep my netbook for watching video and working on “full” applications on the train and on the move. Yes I may have to carry around a little more at a time but it’s cheaper and the experience is in another league.
My Speil 