Does the world really need an all-in-one device?

Ceroc Addict

Ceroc Addict

Registered
I've been thinking about this a fair bit over the past few months and the conclusion I've reached is that I could care less about an all-in-one device.

Basically, I would like to comfortably carry 4 devices with me:

1. Mobile phone/organiser, with a built in thumb keyboard

2. MP3 player

3. Digital camera

4. Personal video player

Today, there are already phones (e.g. Nokia 6822) and MP3 players (e.g. iPod shuffle/mini) that are the perfect size and weight for carrying around.

Truly pocketable digital cameras, which take decent quality pictures (esp. distance and low light shots), aren't that far off at all.

Personal video players are still fairly brick-like, but they'll probably be acceptable within 2 - 4 years.

Arguments against an all-in-one device:



  • 4 devices will always give you better battery life than one all-in-one device
  • You can use up the battery on your MP3 player completely and still have phone capability
  • You can have one device break (or stolen, etc) and still have the other devices
  • You can split the weight of devices between pockets
Anyone else have an opinion about this?

Kap
 
I don't fully agree although your arguments are justified. I think it is much more important to have 4 devices in one than a longer battery-life. My mobility will end after approximately 16h in my bed and I don't expect my device to be longer mobil unless I have no opportunities to plug it for recharging. I think it is better to have only one screen showing your phone status, calender, song playback, video and pictures than having 4 screens. And I also think it will be a lot more expensive to have all these 4 devices bought seperately (not considering that they definitely will have a better quality) than one device.
So, I would rather like to have an all-in-one solution if I would need all 4 components. If I only use the phone as such and rarely listen to mp3s not to mention watching videos or taking lousy pics than it's a very clear decission.
But your discussion is assuming that one needs all 4 of them..
 
my argument against an all-in-one goes like this. i'd rather have a cheap phone that works as a phone than an all in one that costs an arm and a leg for crappy quality on fronts i rarely use.
 
cfleck - i doubt choice would disappear as a result of an all-in-one device being bought to market.

i have a samsung d500 - its got an mp3 player, 1.3m pixel cam (surpisingly good quality), video (albeit not great quality), basic organiser functionality and it makes and receives phone calls!

sure, the 'extras' on the device arent up to the standards of some of the stand alone cameras and mp3 players - but its a step in the right direction and a step closer to a great all-in-one.

you'll always be able to buy a device which is 'just a phone'.
 
actually parb, i question that. i've mentioned it before on these forums, but i hate phones with all the crap on them. its getting harder to find a phone that lacks a camera but has a decent feature set.
 
Ok. i see the point. but.
i think mp3 player and "personal video player" are effectively doing the same thing. you can't use both at once.
as for the camera. unless you're amish and walk everywhere, put a decent quality small digi cam in your bag/backpack/car/office/whatever. as for the phone.
i will be buying the SE0910i soon, so don't talk to me about "i like cheap phones".

everything today is convergance. it's a good thing. less crap to carry/find/lose/remember how to use.
 
Well, then let's go imaginary for a moment. ;) If Apple were to release the "iDoitall", which'd have the form factor of a Nokia Communicator 9300 (maybe slightly wider even), a good keyboard, media playing, messaging-multitalent (3G, GSM, EGPRS/GPRS, WiFi, Bluetooth, everything) with a decent 3-5 MegaPixel camera today, I guess they'd do so because they got it right. Alas, I just don't _think_ Apple will do that. And as long as the device is something that somehow caters to a Nokia's or a SonyEricsson's needs, I guess Mac compatibility and iTunes/iMedia integration will be an afterthought. Plus: It'll be slow. Or at least JUST so imperfect that you're going to want the next version, too. :p

It's a sad thing, but none of the mobile phone makers actually want to create the 'finished' mobile phone. Unless we're talking Vertu. But they _do_ charge.
 
What about the Siemens "Buisness class" SK65? Cost ~€500,- plays music and videos, gets you e-mail, etc. etc. Sure, it doesn't come cheap, but I don't even want to know what a Vertu costs ... (which btw. I guess is ten times that ...) Cheaper than the newest Communicator, but with a smaller screen. Sounds good.
 
well i'll talk cheap phones because thats what i like.

anyway, i'm yet to hear a really good argument for why it seems that every phone maker out there seems to feel like they need to put all this crap in the phones. i'm sure there are plenty of people (like some of you) who like this multifunction strategy and are willing to pay for it.

the rest of us however, just want a phone to talk on. thats it.

personal video player? i'd rather talk to someone.
personal music player? only when i'm reading
digital camera? i'll take my d70 over a camera phone any day.

some of us just aren't the right people for this crap. and everyone says "well, it will get better". i promise you'll never see a camera in a phone as good as a quality stand-alone camera. and thats what i want. if i'm going to do it, i'm going to do it right.
 
Pengu said:
i think mp3 player and "personal video player" are effectively doing the same thing. you can't use both at once.
Click to expand...
The personal video player is going to need a reasonably sized screen which you really wouldn't want drop when jogging (while listening to MP3s).

i.e. The environment where you use these devices doesn't always overlap, even though the functionality does.

fryke said:
If Apple were to release the "iDoitall"
Click to expand...
Of course, if Apple released such a gadget, I'd feel compelled to buy it. ;) :D

cfleck said:
i'm yet to hear a really good argument for why it seems that every phone maker out there seems to feel like they need to put all this crap in the phones.
Click to expand...
The argument that can I semi-relate to: The phone is the one gadget that you're most likely to want with you all the time (plus, it's the biggest market segment). So, if you're going to build an all-in-one device it would be best to centre it around the phone.

However, I'm like you and would prefer if manufacturers gave us better options in the stripped down side of the spectrum (esp. get annoyed when I see phone manufacturers putting in a Java Virtual Machine).

Kap
 
fryke said:
It's a sad thing, but none of the mobile phone makers actually want to create the 'finished' mobile phone. Unless we're talking Vertu. But they _do_ charge.
Click to expand...
Just had a look at the Vertu site - what a piece of garbage! Very pretty and very useless. Not my idea of the "finished" mobile phone at all.

Kap
 
I agree completely.

For me, there's another reason:

I hate worrying about my phone. I've always given my phones a beating; I don't want a phone that I can't have in my pocket with my keys. I need it to be able to withstand a reasonable fall onto concrete and survive. I currently have a Nokia 3530, which is starting to look truly dated by today's standards. Yet still, I like it (I would be 100% happy with it if it had Bluetooth (or even IR) and if all its bits still worked as new (vibrator functions have recently died, ringtone volume is inaudible))

I hate the idea of a smartphone (especially the ones with keyboards). I have my iPod for calendar and addresses (would be nice for all the Address Book data to be copied (photo etc) and view nicely (like on some sort of colour screen).

Even my crappy phone can e-mail, not that I do all that much of that on the road. If it had Bluetooth, I could use its GPRS on my laptop (which would be nice). Till then, I think it's fine.

As for portable video; well I wouldn't use that. I have a large collection of Music Videos, but they're not any good for watching on the road (my iPod is used for playing music in the car mostly, and Solitaire and timetables while at Uni). I think I could understand if the iPod Photo (at those exorbitant prices) could play video, but I don't know if it's exactly something I'd pay for. It's just novelty, I figure.

Phones are morphing into PDAs, which was and is (as far as I care) a dying market.
 
My needs for camera make it that it can't be on the phone. I need at least 10x optical zoom. I need the camera to have a camera feel. I need to be use the camera even in my dreams. A mobile phone camera I can't. Or show me a mobile phone with a camera with 10x optical zoom, starting from 5-6 MPI, flash and so on.

I don't want my mp3 player be mixed with a phone either. Unless you can make a phone with everything I need, the size of iPod mini, with 5 GB storage for mp3s, and that works seamlessly with OS X (and the nerd in me wants to add FreeBSD, and Debian to this). Basically looking like an iPod mini, maybe with a pen and touch screen, so I would not even need the annoying numeric pad.

I did not really need an organizer. Now I do have one, in p800. And as Newton 2000, of course.

I do have a camera on the SE p800, however the only use it is for is instant shots, for web quality. So not for photgraphing itself.

On a typical day, I carry at least the phone, and at least 1 iPod (most likely the mni, sometimes shuffle). Depending on the day, I also may or may not have a portable 40 GB firewire hard drive (at work I do), an iSight (work), a camera (on free time), mayne 2 iPods in total (never carry all 3), maybe even the Newton.

And, fortunately I have the option in the phone to have it on, but not taking any calls. Since someone with home phone only is never asked "why weren't you home to answer the calls", I don't htink I am required to be reachable 24 7. If it's urgent, people know how to reach anyway - email or AIM (and no, not even waniting to use those on phone, even those both are enabled on mine), or when I need a break, I'll be back to the projects.
 
I'm, with cfleck on this one.

I want a new phone, but I don't want it to be big and ugly with a crappy camera and a crappy mp3 player. I just want a small simple stylish (and cheap) phone. The one feature I would like though is bluetooth so I can sync address books. Does such a thing exists? Does it bollo....



Anyway, in more general terms, I don't want an all-in-one device. What I'd like is a number of separate small devices that can all work together through some kind of wireless communications.

It'd be great if my PDA and my digital camera could just wirelessly use my iPod as their storage device, and wirelessly use my phone as a modem, and my phone in turn could be ultra small, as all the extra functions would be moved to my PDA. The PDA would also act as a screen for playing movies that would be stored on my iPod.

All of these devices could then, individually, be a lot smaller than an all in one device could ever be, so you'd never have a big brick of a device to lug around.

With an all in one device, it can only ever be as small as the screen it has (which needs to be of a reasonable size for video and so on) so you tend to have a pretty large device. If this was separate from the phone part, and the mp3 part, you'd only need to use the big screen when you wanted to. (of course, if any of these roll-able screen technologies take off, this point may become moot).

I strongly believe that interoperability is the way to go, rather than an all-in-one.

All-in-ones just seem to be a compromise in every respect.
 
Just for the record: the question is not, if someone needs an mp3 or video device on the road. We are talking about the case that someone DOES need those 4 devices on the road and the question is if it makes more sense to have it all in one or not. ;)
We are not even considering the lower quality of these components in such all-in-one phones/PDAs since it's a matter of time to improve this.
 
I think that pdas are on the way out, though the treo isn't going without a fight. Still, those look really "geeky" to me, worse than the Nokia 9600 Communicator.

I think it's more of a couple of devices that do one thing really good and do a few others. My iPods play music wonderfully. The fact that I can carry data and basic notes and calendar items and a few games are icing on the cake.

For phones, so many are crap. I'm very happy right now with the Nokia 6630. It's fast, has a great battery life and the reception is superb. The fact that I can watch videos on it (3G or bluetoothed from my PB), play mp3s (including stuff from the iTMS) and I have notes and calendar functions are icing on the cake. Between the two, I really don't need a pda anymore.
 
Gia.. why not get a 1Gb Sony MS Pro, pop it in your p800 and use that instead of an ipod?
 
Zammy - Actually, the question is "Does the world really need an all-in-one device?"

Some of us are saying, "not really".

We are not even considering the lower quality of these components in such all-in-one phones/PDAs since it's a matter of time to improve this.
 
Zammy - Actually, the question is "Does the world really need an all-in-one device?"

Some of us are saying, "not really".

We are not even considering the lower quality of these components in such all-in-one phones/PDAs since it's a matter of time to improve this.
Click to expand...

If you take a look at my argument from above, you can see why this is somewhat important. There are those of us that want a camera/mp3 player/can opener that is the bomb. There will never be a camera in a phone that is as good as a stand alone. Same with these other devices. There will always be benefits to multiple devices vs. and all-in-one.
 
cfleck, yes but considering you NEED all those mentioned devices. Our discussion is breaking when ppl start with: I don't need mp3 player or video playback..
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top