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View Full Version : Cell Phone Purpose: Entertainment?


Jon Westfall
05-22-2006, 10:00 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.electronicdesign.com/Articles/ArticleID/12436/12436.html' target='_blank'>http://www.electronicdesign.com/Art...2436/12436.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"There was a time when children could convince their parents they needed a cell phone because wherever they were, they would always be just a phone call away. It's hard for a teenager to use that excuse now. Today's cell phones are as much portable entertainment devices as they are phones. So many models boast MP3 players, games, cameras, and even video, some experts say we soon will spend as much as 80% of the time using our phones for entertainment. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. It makes some sense to combine applications, especially popular items like MP3 players, with cell phones. One thing's for sure, though. Whether we want it or not, we're going to get it anyway."</i><br /><br />While Cell Phones are turning more and more into entertainment devices, this article just as well could highlight how the simple PIM purpose of a Pocket PC has slipped away, allowing a Pocket PC to become more than just it's original intention. I probably use my Pocket PC for an even mix of productivity and entertainment - What about you? And is it a good or bad thing that cell phones and Pocket PC's have "evolved" to be high-tech toys?

Gerard
05-23-2006, 03:54 AM
The original intent of Pocket PC makers and Microsoft was to use these things primarily for PIM? Really? Gosh, I remember reading a bunch of magazine articles about these things, back in the winter of 1999/2000, and there was scant focus thereon PIM. Pocket PC Magazine, Pen Computing, and a few articles in other rags were full of Zio Golf, Bubblets, Windows Media Player, Pocket Internet Explorer, Avantgo, Solitaire, loads of stuff that had nothing whatsoever to do with a day-planner. If PIM was the intended focus of marketing and design, they failed miserably.

Nah, the intention was to blow the doors off Palm's black&amp;white, all-business persona. While Palm devices could, by 1999, run thousands of games, that was not the market's perception. They were toys for businessmen, plain and simple. The odd geek might have one too, but these were serious PIM tools. The Pocket PC's multi-media focus was intended to expand that market dramatically.

Didn't pan out quite so quickly as MS hoped, I should think, but it has worked out fairly well over the past 6 years. We've seen an almost stagnated market for monochrome screened devices, devices with little or no expansion potential, and lately devices with no form of connectivity. But the orginal lineup of Pocket PCs had no native connectivity either, just add-on modems of whatever sort, and not a lot of those to choose from.

With a Casio CF dialup modem my Casio E-115 served my web browsing and email and FTP needs very nicely for the first 6 months, until I became greedy and wanted more speed and capacity and got an EG-800, then an iPAQ, then eventually a wireless card... For me, the core uses have always been PIM, but those were and remain the necessities, not exclusive of entertainment uses and educative ones besides. The versatility of the PPC is what drew me, and presumably most other users, away from the Palm or the mere cellphone and towards full computing experiences.

A computer in one's pocket is a powerful tool. And yes, the more easily one can access the web the more useful it becomes. Cellphone connectivity and/or universally accessible broadband Wi-Fi are a logical extension of this sort of device. Cellphones seem to me to be evolving convergently with the PPC, and Palm's efforts of late are along for a similar ride. They'll all eventually merge into a line of similar machines, with varying sizes and prices to suit different market segments, but essentially all offering similar functionality.

It's my perspective that the PPC has done it better, following a more rational path. The PPC has always offered better word processing/data access, more versatile PIM, and by far better multimedia (especially movies) than anything else - though often using third-party softwares, as Microsoft's are decidedly lame for the most part. The PPC will soon incorporate all phone functions at levels of reliability attractive to business users and demanding consumers of whatever sort. Meanwhile there are 'free' cellphones for those who cannot suffer the sometimes temperamental nature of Microsoft's OS ideas. I'm happy to wait for a more ideally converged phone/PPC, one with a nice big touchscreen, great phone functionality, perhaps a Bluetooth earphone/mic that docks in the side of the PPC for storage and charging (and easy access, without wearing the bloody thing all the time and looking like a complete dweeb), dynamite battery life, killer recording quality, a sweet camera, etc. Meantime my clamshell Motorola will do just fine for phone use, and with Wi-Fi practically everwhere there's really not a lot of need for slower. wildly expensive cellphone-style data plans.

A rant? Perhaps. I'm a bit frustrated by these articles which keep showing up, stating the bleeding obvious but getting things sort of backwards. Cellphones are trying to become PPCs, but with tiny non-touchscreens making them less functional. PPCs are adding cellphone functionality, without losing the PIM they've always done, and ever increasing in power and breadth of capability. The only really comprehensible reason for this whole process of convergence taking so long is the virtually complete lack of advertising by PPC sellers. I saw a tiny ad in a Source flyer today, for an Asus GPS PPC running WM5. I was almost shocked, as it's so rare to see an actual ad. Pages and pages of cellphones in the same flyer of course...

Menneisyys
05-23-2006, 06:45 AM
Personally, IMHO, to have great gaming capabilities is great. Let's not forget that the Nokia N93 also has hardware-based 3D acceleration. We want the same on the PPC platform.

joker
05-23-2006, 08:03 AM
... allowing a Pocket PC to become more than just it's original intention. ...i claim that pockets pcs never had this particular original intention that you write about. infact as soon as i saw such devices for the first time (around 2000/2001) i saw them in a magazine discussing all the available possibilities such a device has but barely the pim aspect.
as the name implies they were always meant to be personal computers with full capabilities (sooner or later; a device has to evolve) small enough to be carried in a pocket.

ot: some days ago Jack Cook introduced the myvu viewer. that together with pocket pcs is the future.