That would describe the Treo 650.
Posted on 10/16/2005 8:11:26 AM PDT by SamAdams76
THAT new iPod nano may be impossibly slim and stylish but the sad truth is it's already obsolete. Even its bigger, video-playing brother - announced last week - will be old technology by the time it hits the shops next month.
For 2006 is to be the year of the Ultimate Gadget, when the phone, music player, camera, organiser, games machine, and pretty much everything apart from the kitchen sink, is crammed into one attractive, effective and easy-to-use package.
The consumer electronics industry is convinced we're tired of carrying two or three separate devices to deal with our entertainment and communication needs. The marketing gurus call the solution "convergence".
And while many modern mobile phones offer a bewildering array of functions none yet does them particularly well. But a series of recent developments have convinced technology-watchers we are on the verge of getting the electronic equivalent of a Swiss Army Knife:
• Tiny, high-capacity hard drives have been developed which allow thousands of songs and hours of high-quality video to be stored on devices no bigger than a mobile;
• South Korean firm Samsung has developed a tiny computer chip powerful enough to process numerous tasks simultaneously; and has also showcased mobiles containing hard disks;
• Software giant Microsoft is working on a mobile-based version of Windows that will handle a wide variety of jobs; and
• PalmOne already claims to have produced the ultimate gadget, the £400 Treo 650, a handheld computer that incorporates a camera but is likely to appeal more to gadget addicts than mainstream consumers.
Meanwhile, the firm that many would argue started it all, Sony, is not far from the action. Sony Ericsson will unveil its W800i Walkman Phone, which includes an organiser, camera, video camera and player, and music player, later this month.
Apple, the creators of the iPod, is refusing to give anything away but industry sources are convinced its iPod Video is just the beginning of the route to convergence.
Paul Harris, Professor of Screen Media at the University of Abertay, Dundee, said there is now a demand for an ultimate gadget, but it will have finally arrived when people no longer think of it as a gadget.
"It will become as essential as a kettle in the home," he said. "It will include a telephone, camera, texting, music store. It will allow you to download programmes and songs from anywhere."
Robert Strohmeyer, gadgets editor of the technology journal Wired, said: "As far as the ultimate convergence gadget is concerned, we are almost there. A series of new phones will come out in the next couple of months which will bring all the functions together."
He added: "One in particular, the Samsung i300, has a hard disk and, for song storage, it is up there with the iPod nano and iPod Mini, and it is a phone and organiser. We can expect convergence devices to become much more common about the end of 2006 onwards. But these devices need to be under £200 in order to become mainstream."
There is another important side to the development: style. Merely cramming features onto a Mars Bar-sized piece of electronics will not be enough to sell, according to experts.
Mainstream consumers, and especially women, have little interest in expensive gadgets which are anything other than completely intuitive.
The iPod's success among women has been shown by a huge increase in their numbers downloading music from the internet. New figures show that while in 2004 96% of downloads were bought by men, this year 31% of the customers are female as women have embraced the new technology.
Shane Greeves, executive creative director of marketing agency Future Brand, said: "The element of style is completely crucial. What Apple has pioneered with the iPod is the philosophy that products do not have to be big and chunky; they can be slim and elegant. One of the key factors that attracts women to iPods is its simplicity. Women don't like gadgets and they are technophobes. On a mobile all women want is an address and text and that is it."
Michael Parsons, the editor of the personal technology website Cnet.co.uk, said: "What Apple cracked with the iPod, was making it easy enough to use. Their Clickwheel on the front allowed the user to find one song among 4,000. There needs to be a similar advance in making gadgets easy to use in order to make a 'super gadget' popular among mainstream buyers."
But there are other challenges in the months and years ahead, among them developing batteries which are both small and high-capacity. Colour screens running video use up plenty of power, yet consumers will demand many hours' use between recharges.
Graham Whitehead, manager of future developments at BT Scotland, agrees the ultimate gadget is on its way, but questions whether its appeal will be universal. "Personally, I quite like having an iPod, which plays music and that is it.
"I like having a high-quality digital camera, which is a good camera and nothing else. If the ultimate device has to fit in a pocket, how big can the screen be? Will it be big enough for those of us who are getting on a bit?"
You might not have to wait too much longer. Miniaturization is improving by leaps and bounds. I read an article where if the pace of technology (RAM, processing speed and storage) keep growing at the same rate, most of us in our lifetime will live to see a device that stores all of the worlds information in a package the size of a wristwatch.
Imagine a wristwatch that has pentabytes of information running on terrabytes of RAM being processed with gigabytes of processing power.
In 1995, I had one PC that ran at 33MHz with 4MB of RAM and a 129MB hard drive. My only access to the Internet was a 2400bps connection to the Prodigy Network.
Ten years later, I have multiple computers with my main computer having a 2.4GHz processor with a gigabyte of RAM and dual 160GB hard drives. That's just one computer and I have six computers and laptops in the house right now all connected wirelessly to a router with access to the Internet at broadband rates!
Where will we be 10 years from now!
The one I have now still works as it did when I took it out of the box, and I don't want to get caught in the trap of buying a new iPod every time the latest and greatest becomes available.
That would describe the Treo 650.
Personally, I'm going to wait until the 80gig video arrives and then I'm going to upgrade. Right now I'm fine with what I have even though I spent most of the summer adding album art to all my files in expectation of eventually being able to display it on my next iPod.
I'm not a big TV watcher but I expect I might check out a few of the better shows once I get my video iPod.
In addition to listening to my music on my I-pod, I can broadcast it to my car or home stereo or burn an audio CD. I can even "rip" my purchased CDs to my I-pod or computer and create my own playlists.
I see no reason to ever purchase a CD again.
I wonder how difficult it is, given the small size of a mobile phone, to hit Ctrl-Alt-Del at the same time...
Ditto. The more you cram in one device, the easier it is for all of its functions to fail.
EXPLOITATION??? They were paid for their time, now they are whining like victims.
Would they be willing to pay paint companies a license fee for every time they appeared in a set that had anything in it that was painted?
After all they are just exploiting the work of the color designers at the paint factory.
Also, some folks may be required to have just a "basic" phone. Companies that want to protect trade secrets, or in my case, those that deal with defense-related work, ban cellphones with cameras in them. In secure areas, you're not supposed to even have them on (I just leave mine at the desk). My cellphone service contract is up next month, and I despair about finding a new cellphone without all the bells and whistles.
By the time I get through suing Apple for failure to provide closed-captioning on their TV video, there will be nothing left to get. Knock yourselves out.
I was thinking pretty much the same thing. Once more video content is released, storage space is going to disappear rather quickly. I was speaking with someone yesterday who mentioned that iTunes will eventually have the capability of ripping video from a DVD in the same way you can rip an audio track for your iPod. I've not been able to confirm this, but if this is true, I will probably need a lot of storage.
I spent most of the summer adding album art to all my files
That's quite a time consuming project!
Exactly my experience. I used to be tied into buying the entire CD which usually included 8 or 9 tracks I'd never want to listen to.
Case in point is that when I ripped my 1100 CDs into iTunes, I discovered that there was only about 3000 tracks I actually wanted to keep even though there was well over 10,000 tracks available!
All that wasted money.
Now I go to iTunes and only download the tracks I actually want to listen to. So instead of spreading my purchasing dollars on only a few albums at a time, I can now spread my music purchasing dollars across many more recording artists. It's a win-win situation for both me and all the recording artists I never would have gotten around to buying from.
I don't have a kettle in my home. I use the microwave.
Oh, the irony.
I just got the Nextel i760. No camera functionality yet it is an awesome cell/radio phone.
"Out of date" does not mean that my iPod will be useless in a year.
It simply means that another hand held device may be able to do more things, which I may or may not be interested in.
(Personally, I can't imagine trying to watch a movie on a screen the size of a Post It Note.)
Some of us don't share your pessimism, nor agree with your conclusions. I bought Apple at 13 3/8 and it is hovering around 50, after a split. I ain't welling soon.
Their market share of pc's is growing, and due to its wider acceptance, I believe that will continue. Macs are not intended for a specific marketplace. It is intended to be an appliance.
Most computer users aren't techies. They want to be able to put the bread in a slot, and wait patiently, with the butter and jam. The Apple people gave it to me in 1984. I use a G5 in 2005... and still have my FatMac... it works.
I bought my daughter a nano, and my wife wants the new vid one...
I mentioned something about hell, and high water, and she just chuckled...
My 17 year old daughter has downloaded so much music to my PC that it's overloading the system. I'm going out today to buy her some external memory so I can clean my system up.
> I found that pretty amazing. I know that my wife would never download a song in billion years. In fact, I don't know of a single woman who cares about downloading music. Generally, women are content to just listen to whatever streams over the radio and are not collectors of music like many men are.
LOL That's why we have teenagers to download the music, and husbands to program the VCR. My wife wants an IPod in a serious way, and I just convinced her she needs a PDA instead of the address book she lugs around with her. Now if that could fit in a unit together with a cell phone AND be simple to operate, it would be too cool.
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