Looking beyond 2006 - the smartphone is dead, long live the phone

[Rafe]

Steve Litchfield sees the death of most other form factors and devices - make way for the all conquering phone...

Read on in the full article.

[wshwe]

I disagree with the premise of the article.The author is the exception rather than the rule. Convergence means making compromises when compared to dedicated devices. Most people want devices that are simple and straightfoward to use.

[mandar-seo]

I dont agree that in the future everything will get converged in one phone and people will stop using the dedicated devices and will turn to the integrated phones. Dedicated devices are specially meant for the particular activity and hence has wide feature and capabilities. You can not expect 12x zoom lenses in mobile phones and even if you manage to incorporate it with reducing size of circuits you hand jerk will make it motion picture than the still photography.

With regards,
Mandar Thosar

[Rafe]

Dedicted devices will always be with us, but covergence will happen. Why? Because the functionality will be good enough and at a fraction of the cost. Tech lovers will naturally tend towards the dedicated devices, the vast majority of people will like convergence since it will give them good enough functionality, or functionality they may not have otherways had. Yes you converged devices will always be behind quality / technically compared to dedicated devices, but does that matter. Far more basic 1-5 megapixel camera are sold that 7+meagpixel slrs. The user experience is a seperate issue - it hard to get right, but it can be done.