Something lighter: Cell phone killed these off?

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**Frazzled**

I actually see the PDA having won. Whats an IPhone but a glorified PDA with internet and phone options? A friend had an original Compaq from back in the day with that.

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/11/five-gadget-whi.html?npu=1&mbid=yhp

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Five Gadgets That Were Killed by the Cellphone
By Charlie Sorrel November 17, 2008 | 10:08:02 AMCategories: Phones

Calling a cellphone a mere phone seems a little silly these days. The little pocket wonders now do so much they are really handheld computers. With extras. The process of mashing one or more gadgets together in the same box used to be called convergence, but that approach quietly died as the mobile phone ate up any and every rival device.

So successful has this been that whole product categories have had the life choked out of their twitching bodies by the phone. The following list is an obituary to five of them, plus a look at the cellphone's next victim.

The PDA

Remember the PDA? Right back to the Psion Organizer in 1984 (above), the PDA has essentially been an electronic calendar, address book and notepad. And right back to the Psion, with its squishy, non-QWERTY keyboard, they've been harder to use than their paper equivalents.

Still, despite this, it took the cellphone to finally kill them off. The fatal shortcoming? The address book. Who on earth would take out their PDA, call up a contact and then tap the phone number into their phone? Nobody, which is why, as the calendaring functions of phones got better, the PDA was quietly retired.

The Camera

We're not saying that the standalone camera is dead. Far from it — one look in the street will show you how popular is the modern DSLR. But for people below a certain age, the camera phone is the one they use, and it has already killed off the cheap, junky bottom end of the digicam market. It's easy to see why: Although the pictures from the small sensors might not be great, the camera phone is always in your pocket, and you can snap and send pictures over the network in seconds.

This convenience more than makes up for the noisy pictures. Remember the saying: The best camera is the one you have with you.

The UMPC

The Ultra Mobile PC was a failed experiment, although once in while a company will drag the rotting corpse from its comfortable grave, slap on a bit of makeup and try to sell the idea again. The reason? Cellphones. Think about it: The UMPC was a full-fledged computer crammed into a tiny box with an impossible-to-use keyboard, with pathetic battery life and a hilariously high price tag. The phone, in contrast, offers an operating system and interface designed for the modest hardware on which it will run. It's cheap, and the battery lasts for days.

Better still, phones are only getting more powerful. The iPhone and the G1 are both handheld computers which happen to have a phone attached. And if you really do need a bigger screen, you can pick up two or three netbooks for the price of one UMPC.

The Phone

Hands up who still has a home land line with a telephone attached? Now, keep your arm in the air if you ever make calls on it. We don't see many hands.

We still keep these old tethered phones around, for calling the emergency services if nothing else, or because its cheaper to buy an all-in-one package from the local telco. But the main phone for many people is the cellphone. Part of this is the convenience of always having it with you, even in the house.

But we think a bigger part is that the humble telephone just hasn't kept up with technology. The handsets just don't have the features we're used to. And when we do use a land line, we look up the number on our cellphone and then type it in. Small wonder that most people just press the green button on the mobile instead.

The MP3 Player

Almost every phone comes with an MP3 player. We guess that in a few years, even the iPod will be dead, replaced entirely by the iPhone (and the iPod Touch, which is really just a cellphone without a phone). Music playback and a headphone jack is now a standard feature on even the cheapest of handsets (with some notable exceptions). Our prediction? The MP3 player will join the PDA in the gadget graveyard within a few short years.

Next: The Notebook

It will take some time, but it's easy to imagine the cellphone completely replacing the laptop for mobile use. Sure, we might keep one at home for work, but the cellphone already does most of what our notebooks do. We can listen to music, play movies and use the internet. One day, those big old, battery-sucking computers will be an amusing relic.

Ironically, these future phones might be lacking the one thing that gave them their name — a phone. When fast data connections are ubiquitous, voice traffic will inevitably be sent over the internet.

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Liked this story? You might also enjoy these posts from Wired.com's Gadget Lab:

**malfred**

The e-book reader was also gasping for some final gulps of air, the last time I checked.

**JohnHwangDD**

I dunno.

I bought a MP3 player (4GB Sansa Clip) back in March. That thing is awesome. Why? Because it's the size of a car remote fob, but holds a ton of music. And you can *fly* with it because it isn't a cell phone. In fact, you can even fly internationally because it is rated for something like 17 hours of playback. Plus, it has *great* sound quality, esp after Sansa added the FLAC and OGG CODECs. There is a lot to be said for a small, well-designed non-proprietary device.

**chromedog**

I have a digital camera (DSLR), mp3 player (Sansa) and a cellphone (nokia 6110). The phone can read my office files as well as pdfs. It has built in gps, and a bunch of other stuffI'll never use.

When I want to take a picture, I say, "dayum! why didn't I bring my camera?" - yes, my phone has one, but it's crap in daylight, let alone dimmer light.

**warpcrafter**

I have the cheapest, simplest possible cellphone, and I talk on it about ten minutes a month, and my landline phone is through MagicJack, which is $20 a YEAR. I've never sent a text message, and most likely never will. I don't even have a CD player in my car, that's how much of an old fart I am. GW and Hardees are to blame.

**dogma**

Its not really true to say that the cell phone 'killed' these various devices. A better way to put it is that all of them had their functionality integrated, with the 'cell phone' moniker sticking because that represents the primary functionality of the device for the average person.

**Kilkrazy**

People use various kinds of devices in different ways. They have different relationships with them depending on their job and life needs. For example, mobile phones didn;t kill PDAs because 95% of the population never needed a PDA anyway. Out of the 5% who did, 3% are using Blackberrys and the other 2% are people like traffic wardens, Fedex drivers and warehousemen who still use specialised PDA handheld computers and always will because they provide battery life, security and robustness.

Landline phones. The only reason I have a landline is to have broadband.

Music players. This is a case where people have an emotional relationship with music and by extension they have an emotional relationship with the devices used to store and play it. Why has vinyl not died? Because it provides a tactile quality that is missing from CDs and MP3s. Will that emotional connection preserve the iPod? I don't know.

It was also predicted a few years ago that wristwatches and pocket calculators would vanish but they haven't.

I have a Sony eReader and would never give it up to read on a phone. The screen is almost as large as a paperback book, which is important for readability. You can't do that on a phone without making it too big for the pocket.

Also, battery life.

**BlackSpike**

The UMPC

The Ultra Mobile PC was a failed experiment, although once in while a company will drag the rotting corpse from its comfortable grave, slap on a bit of makeup and try to sell the idea again. The reason? Cellphones. Think about it: The UMPC was a full-fledged computer crammed into a tiny box with an impossible-to-use keyboard, with pathetic battery life and a hilariously high price tag. The phone, in contrast, offers an operating system and interface designed for the modest hardware on which it will run. It's cheap, and the battery lasts for days.

Hardly!
UMPC was not getting anywhere until the One Laptop Per Child project got off the ground. Suddenly, every company who could was making UMPCs.
The ASUS Eee 700 started the ball rolling, and now that mobile broadband (3G) is available cheaply, they are a great idea.
Hilarious price tag? Yup, £179 is quite amusing.

I doubt they will ever be the ubiquitous devices that mobile phones are, but they certainly have their niche, and rather than being dead, are growing in popularity and usefulness.

**CyberShadow**

dogma wrote:Its not really true to say that the cell phone 'killed' these various devices. A better way to put it is that all of them had their functionality integrated, with the 'cell phone' moniker sticking because that represents the primary functionality of the device for the average person.

Agreed. You could say that the mobile phone died along with the other gadgets. To paraphrase, "How many have a cell phone? How many of you use it to actually make calls?" I use my phone mostly to text. I also have a PDA, a land line, a digital camera and an mp3 players. I like to change my phone every two years or so. I want to keep my PDA longer than this. I dont listen to mp3 on my mobile as this usually leaves no battery after a very short time, and then I want to make a call. A phone camera, while convenient, will never replace a true camera just because of the focal length inside the box.

The real question is, do you call the device that you take photos with, listen to music on, send text messages with, and occasionally talk on, a mobile phone in the same way that it was 7 years ago?

**JohnHwangDD**

Kilkrazy wrote:It was also predicted a few years ago that wristwatches and pocket calculators would vanish but they haven't.

Wristwatches have probably sold better in the past few years than ever before, now that they're "fashion accessories" rather than functional items. Seriously, you cannot compete for accuracy with the autosync global time that the phone companies provide, so you drop it and go for the "cool" factor. I know guys who pay mad money for watches. More than any 40k army. And they buy several.

It's pretty funny, IMO.

**Fallen668**

I dont mind having seperate devices that do only one thing. I would rather have a device that does one thing well than a device that does a couple of things "good enough".

**Platuan4th**

CyberShadow wrote:To paraphrase, "How many have a cell phone? How many of you use it to actually make calls?"

Me. I recently got an upgrade for my old phone and turned down the chance to get a Voyager or some other fancy phone with full keyboard, touch screen, etc. because I don't need all that crap. I use mine as a phone I occasionally text on, and I know how to work the Word functioning right. I opted for the Dark Knight edition of the Nokia 6205 because it's pretty much an upgraded version of my old LG(can play MP3s, better screens), plus it comes with Batman themes, ring tones, and coloring.

**CyberShadow**

Platuan4th wrote:
CyberShadow wrote:To paraphrase, "How many have a cell phone? How many of you use it to actually make calls?"

Me.

Umm... Exactly! Ha. The mobile phone isnt dead.

I guess that my point is, is the iPhone a mobile that plays mp3's or an mp3 player that makes phone calls? Or, a PDA that does both?