Maybe Your Phone Doesn't Need to Be Smart

As the owner of a haggard two-year-old Samsung flip phone — the cheapest I could get that had a display screen on the outside — I greatly appreciate Judi’s guide to the different mobile operating systems. I keep thinking I need a better phone, but I don’t want to commit to one or pay for one or deal with a wireless salesperson. So I putter along with the most limited of mobile capabilities and carry my music player, camera, and “PDA” (in my case, just a paper notebook with my favorite pen) separately.

Maybe this is a new trend: anti-convergence or semi-convergence, multiple devices instead of everything-in-one. It’s a trend towards letting our phones just be phones, then supplementing with PDAs, small PCs, iPods, and cameras as our lifestyles and workstyles demand.

Our article on mobile operating systems spawned two convergence-contrarian comments, the first from Nicola Larosa, who says:

Convergence is not all that is cracked up to be: sometimes it’s better having two different devices, each with different strengths.

Nicola points to a review of the Nokia N800, an “Internet tablet.” It’s a small keyboard-less Linux computer with a really nice screen focused on web browsing and web apps. This could be an interesting complement to a basic phone, though it sounds like you’d want one that can work as a Bluetooth modem so the N800 can access the Internet that way.

Brad Linder agreed with Nicola, and points out the budgetary aspect that’s of concern to many of us finding our way sans big company salary:

I’m with Nicola. Convergence is overrated — of course that probably has a lot to do with my work lifestyle. I spend most of my time in the office, and when I’m in the field all I really need in a mobile phone is the ability to make phone calls.

I use a Windows Mobile PDA with a nice 3.7 inch screen for my appointments, contacts, taking notes on the go, shopping lists, reading the paper (through RSS feeds synchronized with my desktop), listening to music/podcasts, and even playing games and watching movies.

I don’t need my phone to do any of those things. I just need it to have a long battery life and to fit in my pocket.

Not to say it wouldn’t be nice to be able to check my email or mapquest on the go. But it’s not worth an extra $30-70 a month for a data plan to do that.

What do you think? Do you want everything in your phone — email access, Internet, camera, music? Or is something simpler suitable for your needs?

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