The PDA Guerilla: Why I don't use a smartphone
- IT TOPICS:Mobile
I was reading David Haskins' piece "Another nail in the PDA's coffin" on Computerworld.com, about the Treo 680 smartphone, in which he suggests that this inexpensive device is likely to further cannibalize the pure PDA market. Actually I disagree with that premise, and I thought I should write about why I don't carry one.
First of all, the article says that the choice is between buying a $100 PDA and a $100 cell phone versus a $200 Treo. I could argue that the Treo actually costs much more than $200. According to Palm Infocenter, the Treo is expected to be priced as low as $160 with a two-year cellular contract including the $30/month "unlimited" data option, which adds $720 to the cost of the device over the two years. By itself, with no new contract, it will cost $600. By comparison, a high-end PDA costs about $600-$800. And if you want to sign a two-year contract, the carrier will give you a basic phone for free, altering the equation.
But the real issue is that neither the $100 PDA nor the Treo can meet the needs of many high-end users. It is true that four years after the introduction of the 64 MB Palm Tungsten T3 that I use, the latest Treos do finally have 64 MB of RAM and rough equivalence in processor power. But their screen size is still half that of any pure PDA, enough to read a short e-mail or calendar entry but hardly sufficient for navigating a Web page not specifically designed for small screens, working in a spreadsheet or reviewing a presentation. For that the smartphone user will need another device, probably a $1,500 laptop that is difficult to use away from a desk.
The Treo also depends on a thumbboard for text entry, while the larger touchscreen on my PDA gives me room for a variety of text entry options. My personal favorite is the Fitaly virtual keyboard, which is designed for stylus operation. By the way, I use a ballpoint pen-body with a solid plastic filler as my stylus rather than the metal stick that comes with the PDA. Again, the thumbboard is sufficient for short e-mail entries, but I write all sorts of things -- from my personal diary to e-mails to articles -- on my PDA. If I tried to do that on a Treo my thumbs would be bloody by the end of the first day.
So why do I want to do all that on a PDA rather than a laptop? Partly because I do now always want to work at a desk. I wrote this sitting in the recliner in my living room. Early this morning I was writing sitting up in bed. And sometimes it is not convenient to use a laptop. They are particularly uncomfortable on airplanes, as anyone who has tried it knows, while using my PDA is easy, even in the middle seat.
And of course as a phone the Treo is a brick, certainly compared to my thin Samsung. The one real advantage of it, of course, is always-on connectivity, which I do not have. And this again speaks to different work styles. For people who need IM connectivity while on the move, or who really do need to answer e-mail the second it arrives, a device like a Treo or Blackberry is a necessity. Personally, I need long periods of uninterrupted time to write. I love e-mail because I can ignore it while I work and answer it when I have finished my project or take a break.
And when I do check my e-mail or want to download something, I have the chioce of using Wi-Fi when that is available or the slower, more expensive cellular network via a Bluetooth connection to my cell phone when it is not. Or I would if I were willing to pay the $30 a month for the unlimited data plan from Sprint. These days I find that the free Wi-Fi networks that are appearing in increasing numbers meet my needs when I am on the road, although admittedly it is a hit-or-miss situation. The Treo requires an unlimited data plan and does not use Wi-Fi. And heavy users of that data plan, for instance those who download a lot of audio or video, may find that it is not really unlimited. I know of several cases where carriers have told users they are exceeding the monthly limits of their "unlimited" plan and will either have to cut back, pay more, or be cut off completely. Personally I would rather save that $720 over two years for other devices.
The logic of the smartphone is that it combines two devices in one for greater convenience. But I also carry an iPod, a pocket digital camera, a digital record for recording interviews, and often a Garmin iQue 3600 GPS. Then I also carry several peripherals including a Think Outside Bluetooth keyboard, one or more Palm Power-to-Go external batteries for my T3 (I have three), and a Plantronics Bluetooth headset that works with the iPod, PDA, and my cell phone. I certainly would like to cut down on that list, but combining everything into one device is not going to happen, and if it did that battery issues would be impossible.
Rather than a cellphone/PDA combination, I favor combining the GPS and perhaps the digital voice recorder with the PDA, and the camera with the cell phone, and then connecting them with Bluetooth. This combines devices that have similar basic design points. A GPS and PDA both require storage (a memory card) and a high-resolution, reasonably-sized screen. A cell phone has no need for those. Instead, the market wants cell phones that are small, thin, and light, with small screens. The digital pocket camera is proving to be a much better fit with the phone, with fewer compromises.
And the mainstream of cell phone development today is clearly toward increasingly sophisticated camera phones. My Samsung is still not as capable a camera as my 5 Mpixel Canon Digital Elph, but it is clearly moving in that direction, and the combination of photography and cellular is creating a new communications medium that I believe will eventually have an impact as great as e-mail or IM.
Having said all this, I have nothing against smartphones, if they fit your needs. Clearly they do fit the needs of many people, an order-of-magnitude more than pure PDA users, although still a fraction of the overall cellular market. But combining a cell phone with a PDA always will result in significant compromises between the conflicting needs of the two devices. And that inevitably means that smartphones will not meet the needs of a significant portion of high-end users. And the reason I do not agree that the new Treo will further erode the PDA marketplace is that the portion of that market who prefer smartphones have already made the switch. I have no doubt that the Treo 680 will attract more users to smartphones, but almost all of those will be new mobile-wireless uers. I believe the remaining high-end PDA users are more likely to move to a next-generation PDA than to a smartphone.
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