PDAs are NOT an endangered species

Tom's
Hardware has a news item claiming that the PDA in its "traditional"
form, ie one without cellular capabilities, is an endangered species in
today's market. They claim that voice is the "killer app" for mobiles, and
PDAs need cellular technology to be taken seriously. They don't know
whether smallish, cell-phone-like devices will take over, or if devices
more like Pocket PC Phone Editions will pick up where "unconnected" PDAs
(and they include Bluetooth and WiFi devices in this category) leave off.

Personally, I think they're wrong, to a point. While phones are the next
great frontier, and the PalmSource/CMS merger should make small, cheap cell
phones with powerful organizer capabilities more common, their analysis
misses the mark because they overlook two points.

PDAs are more than PIMs. I'm a little surprised to hear something like this
from Tom's Hardware, but not too surprised. I regularly teach classes on
basic PDA use, and at the beginning of each class, I ask how many of the
students think of a Palm as an electronic daytimer. Over the time I've been
teaching, about 85% of the hands have gone up. PalmSource and Microsoft are
doing a piss-poor job of educating consumers on what these handheld
computers can really do. The truth is a PDA can do most of what laptops
actually end up doing (how many business travellers actually burn DVDs on
their laptops?). Add a foldable keyboard, and that "unconnected" PDA, which
gets much better battery life than a smartphone, can function as a cheaper
and lighter alternative to a laptop for a lot of executives.

The other thing Tom's Hardware misses is that people aren't limited to
carrying only one device. If you are only going to carry one device, by all
means, use a smartphone; they're better than basic or feature phones. But
having owned a couple of smartphones, I've found that a Bluetooth PDA and a
Bluetooth feature phone work better as a "solution" than one converged
device. My phone is small, pocketable and works great as a phone. My PDA
has a big screen, big battery, lots of memory and other enhancements that
simply wouldn't fit in the limited size of a smartphone. While it does
require carrying more gear, a Bluetooth PAN (PDA, phone, headset, GPS,
whatever else you want) is more flexible and longer lasting than any
converged solution.

So I think Tom's Hardware is jumping the gun here. Phones are going to be
big, but PDAs, especially those with Bluetooth and/or WiFi, are far from
endangered.