Fujitsu-Siemens is sort of right and sort of wrong.
The problem is that people keep confusing what a smartphone actually is. I own a FSC PocketLoox 720. It's an awesome PDA. Big, high res screen. USB host. All the bells and whistles. And I don't use it must anymore.
Why?
Well, I also have an HTC Wizard PPC Phone. And since it also runs Windows Mobile - most of the stuff I ran on the Loox also runs on the Wizard. But I also get phone functionality too. And while the 3.7" VGA screen on the Loox is awesome - most things work just fine on the 2.6" QVGA screen on the Wizard.
Meanwhile, my new Samsung Q1U fills in the larger screen/higher resolution needs much better than the Loox does.
So, technically, yes - a smartphone replaced my PDA - but ONLY because the smartphone was a phone version OF my PDA.
But I also have an iMate SP3i smartphone - and it does NOT replace the Loox. The lack of touchscreen, low resolution and the clumsiness of using the system through a number keypad exclusively made it really only useful for a small subset of functions.
So, really - PDAs aren't disappearing - they're merging with phones to be come PDA/Phones. If you want to call that a Smartphone (which it is, to be honest), that's fine - but it misrepresents the reality of the situation because most people still see a smartphone as a regular phone with some PIM functions and a camera thrown in.
PS: FSC's refusal to offer system upgrades didn't help either. My Loox 720 is WM4 and cost me $850. I really didn't feel like spending $500+ to get a new PDA to get a new OS. It also didn't help that FSC chose not to market into North America at all - forcing me to buy mine through a reseller in Europe.
“An engineer explained to us that hundreds of ear impressions were gathered in the name of research, and while each one obviously boasted its own unique shape and size, one single characteristic remained uniform across the board: the entrance into the ear canal is not a perfect circle, it's an oval.”
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Fujitsu-Siemens is sort of right and sort of wrong.
The problem is that people keep confusing what a smartphone actually is. I own a FSC PocketLoox 720. It's an awesome PDA. Big, high res screen. USB host. All the bells and whistles. And I don't use it must anymore.
Why?
Well, I also have an HTC Wizard PPC Phone. And since it also runs Windows Mobile - most of the stuff I ran on the Loox also runs on the Wizard. But I also get phone functionality too. And while the 3.7" VGA screen on the Loox is awesome - most things work just fine on the 2.6" QVGA screen on the Wizard.
Meanwhile, my new Samsung Q1U fills in the larger screen/higher resolution needs much better than the Loox does.
So, technically, yes - a smartphone replaced my PDA - but ONLY because the smartphone was a phone version OF my PDA.
But I also have an iMate SP3i smartphone - and it does NOT replace the Loox. The lack of touchscreen, low resolution and the clumsiness of using the system through a number keypad exclusively made it really only useful for a small subset of functions.
So, really - PDAs aren't disappearing - they're merging with phones to be come PDA/Phones. If you want to call that a Smartphone (which it is, to be honest), that's fine - but it misrepresents the reality of the situation because most people still see a smartphone as a regular phone with some PIM functions and a camera thrown in.
PS: FSC's refusal to offer system upgrades didn't help either. My Loox 720 is WM4 and cost me $850. I really didn't feel like spending $500+ to get a new PDA to get a new OS. It also didn't help that FSC chose not to market into North America at all - forcing me to buy mine through a reseller in Europe.