Long Live the PDA: Hand-Held Gadgets Lead a Double Life

It's been the kind of week that makes the pen-and-paper set say, "I told you so." Sony, perhaps the once and future king of portable gadgetry, let slip quietly that it wouldn't ship any new hand-held electronic organizers this year in Europe or North America.

Combined with the fact that the inventors of the Palm Pilot have themselves been struggling in a shrinking market for a couple of years, the Sony acknowledgment led some technology industry insiders to ask if, after a tumultuous history that has included the much- mocked Apple Newton as well as the cultlike Psion series, the personal digital assistant is dead.
The answer is, no, the PDA isn't dead, it's just secretly leading a double life as a phone.

In fact, Sony didn't only say it would stop producing new Clies, the brand name for its PDA line that runs on the Palm system. It also said it would redouble its efforts to develop wireless devices that combine a number of features. Given that Sony has a fairly large mobile phone venture, don't be surprised to see the Clie eventually melded with a Sony Ericsson phone.
So fans of the printed calendar, the sharpened pencil and the portable eraser can't declare a total victory just yet.

Not Yet a Natural Complement
However, it's also true that the PDA is not yet a natural complement to one's daily life. It takes a particular kind of person to be motivated enough to make an iPaq or a Palm or a Blackberry worth the trouble.

You need to be patient enough to learn how the device works, something that is not always intuitive. You need to be persistent enough to keep up with it and stop writing phone numbers on the backs of envelopes. You need to be willing to keep it with you and actually haul it out and consult it as necessary. And you have to be organized enough to keep its battery charged, its innards synchronized with your computer and its data backed up.
You don't need much incentive to get a mobile phone, on the other hand, except the desire to make or get a call outside of home or work. As mobile phone makers pile on features and gimmicks to get you to trade up to a new one, portable users are discovering the conveniences of PDA-like accessories on the phone.

The feature that lets you add the phone number of the person who has just called to the mobile phone's directory; the ability to send short-text messages; the list of incoming and outgoing calls, in precise order, replete with the time of day and length of the call, to the second these simple jobs have just whetted our appetites for more and more organizing tools.
It has now gotten to the point that 30 percent of mobile phone users still whip out their portable even when they are in reach of a far cheaper fixed-line phone, one British-based study concluded. It's the price of convenience: Mobile phone owners know they often just have to push one button to make their connection. Their cellphone is also their one-button gateway to voice mail, and the network is reliable enough that they are almost certain of getting through.

From Technews.com

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