I had a conversation during lunch the other day with a couple coders and they were saying they couldn’t wait for a cell-phone-PDA-pager-camera combo that was Bluetooth-WiFi-GPRS-3G-Infrared enabled, you know, a no compromise, everything goes in thing. Oh, and it needs to be small too and have a long long battery life….

This ZDNet article says that they can dream on. Will not happen. Market not going there. I’m not sure I agree.

I see a definite appeal in not looking like Batman with a belt full of gizmos, and the author concedes himself that this segment of the market is tougher to call than any other. Personnaly, I find my pager big enough for most purposes. It’s thicker that some cellphones. And I would not want to carry both devices. Add my PDA and I already feel like I’m doing too much. A single device certainly looks appealing.

However I also do believe that some features belong together, and the Personal Area Network concept looks great: multiple devices communicating together, avoiding redundancy, using the best tool for a job.

For example, telecommunication is service, just like a scanner is a component of a photocopier. A scanner is also a component in a fax machine, and a computer scanner is that component separated from any other interface, instead relying on the computer to do anything useful. I find that approach of not duplication services really interesting.
I mean all-in-one office machines (fax, copier, printer, scanner combos) do sell quite well, but they never excel at any task. Getting a computer and choosing a printer according to your needs, a scanner according to your preferences, and a modem according to what’s cheaper this week will probably end up giving you better results if you can afford the space and the time to make the components work together. Yet separate component that work well together may indeed be the way of the future geek while the all-in-one device might be another market offer.

I could imagine a pager sized device clipped to my belt for various RF services and storage, a bluetooth earset for voice communication and maybe voice recognition, and a small Palm style device for PDA-like functions, all working together. I want to drop the PDA for a day? No problem. PDA without wireless but with the earset? Want to control your PowerPoint presentation from you PDA? Mix and match. Want an all in one device? Also possible. After all, simplicity is of the essence.