The Phone of the Future?

By Keith Boykin, in pop culture
Thursday, September 8 2005, 12:34AM

Ipod phoneAt last, here it is. After two weeks of buzz, I have finally seen the new IPOD cell phone (well, at least a picture). It's not perfect (it only stores 100 songs and you can't download music from the phone), but it may mark the beginning of a new revolution in multi-functional handheld devices. The goal: a single device that does everything. Right now the Treo and the Blackberry are the closest tools we have. I can't speak for the Blackberry, but the Treo works pretty well as a Palm Pilot and a web browser, but it sucks as a phone, camera, email device or mp3 player.

The Ipod cell phone is far from my ideal phone. My ideal phone would combine the mp3 function of the Ipod, the PDA capacity of the Palm Pilot, the web browser from the Treo, the email capacity of the Blackberry, the camera ability of the Canon Powershot, and built in Bluetooth capacity with a free Motorola wireless headset. Now if you can fit all that into a single handheld device for a reasonable price, I'd buy it. Is that too much to ask?

Comments (4) reveal

Comments conceal

mr
September 8 2005, 10:04AM

It sort of is. The more things they add to these devices, the more the overall quality drops.

Omar
September 8 2005, 8:23PM

Well, not to take the wind out of the sail of your article. But, Motorola is a little behind. PalmOne USA placed a similiar phone on the market 6 months ago. It has RealPlayer installed instead of iTunes. It plays mp3, video and photo cam, PDA, BlueTooth, cell phone capabilities, etc. Check it out:
http://web.palm.com/products/smartphones/treo650/details.jhtml

Keith Boykin
September 8 2005, 9:12PM

Omar,

I already have that phone. It's the Treo 650 and it sucks. It's an expensive piece of crap. I bought it at $600, which it's not nearly worth. It's now selling for $300, which is at least a bit more reasonable.

I mentioned the phone in the article. The only function that works well is the Palm-based PDA and the web browser. Everything else, including the phone itself, is second rate. And don't get me started about the mp3 capacity. (Yeah, you can use it if you install a separate card that doesn't work with Itunes.)

The Treo is okay, but it's not the answer.

Mune
September 17 2005, 7:01AM

Thank you very much!