One Piece or Two?11 November 2002 There's a great thread over on Brighthand about what's better for wireless access on PDAs: a one-piece convergent solution like the Pocket PC Phone Edition, or a two-piece solution composed of a PDA and a separate cell phone bonded by a Bluetooth connection. The overwhelming majority of the posters on Brighthand came out in favor of a two-piece solution, and I just don't get that. While there's certainly room in the marketplace for both alternatives, I think the convergent solution is definitely the way to go. I can't abide those goofy, small-for-the-sake-of-being-small cellphones - "Hey, I just got a cellphone the size of a fingernail! I have no idea where it is, but it's so tiny!" - so I'd have to carry a PDA, a cellphone I could actually wrap my hand around, not to mention things like a foldable keyboard and maybe a thumbboard (the thumbboard for the XDA does a much better job a eliminating the need for the stylus than the HP Pocket Keyboard did, so I'll probably use it more). Moreover, a lot of the folks that came out in favor of two-body solutions were actually professing three or four body solutions, once you add in a Bluetooth headset and GPS. Are these people living out some childhood Batman fantasy? I know deep down we'd all kinda like to be James Bond, but come on, this the real world. Looking like a Borg will only take you so far. So let's take a look at why I think less is better, especially for mobile professionals - like writers - on the go. We'll start by looking at some of the most common reasons stated for preferring a two-body solution and seeing if they really make sense. The first thing people mention is battery life. The reasoning goes that if their current PDA doesn't get as good battery life as their phone, then using the PDA as a phone must suck it dry in no time flat. Recently I found myself engrossed in a call with a friend on my Pocket PC Phone Edition. I had him on speakerphone for most of the conversation - while I cooked and ate dinner - and when I finally hung up over two hours later, my battery level had only dipped to 80%. My previous cell phone, a Motorola v Series, would have been close to low battery warnings after a similar call, without the additional drain of the increased speakerphone volume. And you know what I did any when I went to bed that night? I dropped my XDA in the cradle to charge while I slept, as I've done with every rechargeable PDA I've ever owned. This is the key point a lot of people don't get. Just because your PDA is also a phone, you're not going to start treating it like you're used to treating your phone. You'll still treat it like a PDA. I make a lot of voice calls with my XDA, but I charge it with exactly the same frequency that I charged my Clié, Jornada and Toshiba e570. My habits on this haven't changed a whit. The only difference is that I no longer have to remember to charge my phone every couple of days as well. A few people mentioned multitasking as a problem, that they needed to be able to use the PDA while on a voice call. This is a simple lack of understanding. As I mentioned above, I frequently use either the speakerphone feature or a headset to leave the screen of my XDA available for use. I can look things up, add tasks, schedule appointments and even take notes pre-filled with the caller's name and number, the date and the time, all while I'm on a call. A lot of people cited the development cycles of the devices and stated that they wanted to be able to upgrade their devices independently or that they didn't want their PDAs locked into a service contract. I'm not sure what they mean about upgrading the phone, since it's all software on the XDA. Bits are easier to change than hardware. As far as locking a PDA to a service agreement, that's really only true if you have a CDMA device from Sprint or Verizon. With GSM carriers like T-Mobile and AT&T, your account is tied to the SIM card rather than the device itself. If you want to upgrade to a new device, you just pop the SIM card out of the old device and into the new and off you go. What's the problem with that? Another frequent complaint with the convergent approach is that phones get lost more than PDAs. The rebuttal to this one, like battery life above, goes back to usage patterns. It's a phone, yes, but it's also a PDA. You're probably going to treat it more like a PDA in terms of keeping track of it - and not dropping it, another common concern - than you would a $50 cellphone. Just because you can make phone calls on a PDA doesn't mean you're going to suddenly act as though it were disposable. People seem to like redundancy. If something bad should happen to one device, at least some of the information is in the other. I can understand this perspective. I spent six years in the US Air Force working in the Pentagon, and nobody believes in redundant backups like the military. But isn't the safety blanket of redundancy offset by only having to enter information once, rather than separately into each device? And if data backup is the issue, Pocket PCs sync with Outlook on the desktop. If something happens to your XDA, your PC is still safe at home. Some people don't understand that while the integration of the phone and PDA offers some compelling advantages, these functions can be used independently. It's a trivial matter of holding the End button down for two seconds to disable the phone radio on an XDA for use aboard an aircraft. It's also possible - almost inevitable if you have conversations longer than three minutes - to use the phone side of the device while the PDA is effectively off. This next one I really don't get. At least one person claimed that an advantage of a two-body solution is the "ability to leave one at home or turn it off and still use the other." I suppose you can't do that with an XDA, as there's no second piece to leave at home. But in either scenario, you're carrying one device. Why wouldn't you want that device to have as much functionality as possible? Another poster wrote: "No human can use the PDA and the phone simulaneously with comfort. You have to put the phone to your ear, or use an ear device while using as a PDA....might as well just have 2 devices anyway then." This person must not realize that many convergent devices, like some of the newer Nextel phones, have a speakerphone feature that allows you to use the PDA normally while conversing just as you would to another person in the same room, with no "ear device" required. Then again, maybe I'm not human. That's not to say that convergent devices are without compromises. Currently devices like the Treo and XDA can't handle concurrent voice and data connections. If you're online and a call comes in, you have to kill the data connection to take the call. Granted, I'm not sure a PDA paired with a Bluetooth cell phone would handle this any better, but it wouldn't be an issue with a cell phone and a WiFi-equipped PDA. Since one of my businesses is web design, it is tough to tell a client that I can't look at their current web site while I'm on the phone discussing the redesign with them. For now, though, I think the pros of convergent devices far outweigh the cons. I have only one device to carry, only one device to keep track of (and not lose in a cab). I don't have to configure and connect multiple devices, a huge plus as I'm on the go much of the time (a friend of mine used to access the Internet on the go via an IR connection between his cell phone and his iPAQ, and he's since seen the light and replaced both with an XDA). I have only one device to plug in at night to charge - something that I've been in the habit of doing every night for years - and only one charger to pack when I travel. I keep my driver's license and debit card in my XDA's Vaja case, so most on the time I only have one thing to take with me when I leave the house: no wallet, no wristwatch, and if I'm walking, no keys. There's a freedom to being unencumbered that I, like most gadget-freaks, haven't known for a very long time. Of course, one size may not fit all. Two-body solutions are getting better, with the Bluetooth integration getting smoother all the time. Palm offers both the T and W models in their Tungsten line because they realize while some customers may like the all-in-one solution of the W, others may prefer the absurdly small T - which is almost too small to fit comfortably in the hand - with an equally small phone. For some people, I guess small is the new big. I just don't understand those people. But consider this. This site has always focused on the needs of the mobile writer (well, tried to focus, anyway). In addition to a PDA, we're going to have to carry a good stylus - I love my Rotring 600 Trio because it's big and heavy - a collapsable keyboard - although I'm getting good enough with Fitaly to make this less a necessity than it's been in the past - and possibly a GPS unit if we're on a story that requires travel to unfamiliar places. Why carry more than you have to? Jeff Kirvin
Jeff Kirvin is available for consulting on mobile technology. Email me today! |