Although I'm generally considered quite technical, I'm usually well behind the cutting edge when it comes to gadgets. My phone came second hand and my Palm is about 4 years old. I just find it hard to justify the cost of the latest and greatest. I hardly use my phone, but have it for when I might need it. The Palm gets a fair bit of use as an address book, calendar and general information store. It also sees occaisional usage as my audio player and I just acquired another 1GB card so I can carry more music for when I travel. The Palm and phone do not talk to each other at all, so cannot exchange data or allow me to get mail or web on the move apart from the very basic, text only web the phone can do.
Meanwhile, people I know have all sorts of wonderful toys. The main one these days is the combined PDA/phone/media device. This has some appeal as it would reduce the number of gadgets I carried around, but they always seem to compromise on something. They do seem to be getting closer to my ideal mobile gagdet. This would have the following features:
- Good colour screen - Big enough for basic web browsing
- Internet access - For the odd browse when I really need to
- Email - Mainly for when travelling as I'm generally not far from a PC
- Camera - Something around 2MP would be useful. The VGA unit on the Palm is not much good
- Removable storage - Preferably some form of SD, mainly for music. I can get by with a couple of GB
- Music player - Has to support Ogg
- Software - I'd like the option to install various useful software. The Symbian platform looks good, but there are limited Palm options too. I'm not sure I need/want Windows
- Bluetooth - Seems to be standard these days. Will allow me to play with GPS
- Wi-fi - Would be nice to have to make use of all these hot-spots that are appearing, especially the free ones
- Phone - I just need the basics. I'm on PAYG as I only spend the odd quid in a month so nobody is going to give me a cheap/free upgrade
- Not too expensive - Naturally
Some people have models from the Nokia Nseries that seem pretty close to what I want. It looks like wi-fi pushes the price up, but I think that whatever device I get next has to have that feature as it will open up posibilities.
I'm not desperate to buy and obviously prices will drop, but then the next wonderful thing appears. Maybe I'll get a bonus and can splash out. Alternatively I could pick up a slightly older unit when others upgrade. Meanwhile, I will be monitoring the trends. Recommendations welcome.
