The mobile phone vs the iPod
Posted on 12.05.05 at 18:50 CET
Bill Gates believes mobile phones will overtake portable music players like the iPod as peoples’ MP3 players of choice.
I keep hearing this prediction and, somehow, it just doesn’t feel right.
Companies seem intent on converging devices just because they can. And considering the number of people I hear complaining about the difficulty of finding a mobile phone without a camera built-in, they’re not about to stop there.
Phones and music players have different lifespans. If all my devices are converged into one, it means I have to replace the whole kaboodle every time I want an improvement to one of the individual components or, worse, one of them dies. A one-size-fits-all interface to multiple functionalities is also bound to sacrifice some usability along the way.
How many people own a TV with DVD player built-in? I see them in the shops, but I don’t see many people buying them. Same story, except consumers have a choice in that case. Hell, they even managed to combine a USB flash drive and a Swiss-Army knife.
A much better scenario, in my humble opinion, is individual devices that talk to each other: your MP3 player knows your phone is ringing, things like that. That means standards though, and we know how long and tortuous that road is.
Time to get ready for another extra feature you won’t use on your mobile.
6 comments
The problem with MP3 players and Cameras in phones is that they always seem like a last-minute addon. Something that was glued on at the end. The interfaces suck, the quality sucks, and battery life is massively reduced (I suppose that will change in the future at some point).
Being able to play a few music tracks with your phone? No problemo. But if you want a proper player, with good capacity and format support, you’ll have to buy separately. The same can be said for photo cameras. And at that moment, you will want to have seperate devices.
Well, I have a smartphone. And it’s half PDA and half-mobile phone in more ways than one. My next purchase will be separate devices (or a phone and a notebook :) )
Interfaces should be getting better, not worse.
> How many people own a TV with DVD player built-in?
Bad analogy, you don’t carry your TV and DVD player around with you.
I don’t understand the people who are against convergence. I don’t need to wear a watch because everything watches do, my phone does.
Being against *poor implementations* of convergence, on the other hand, is perfectly understandable.
> A one-size-fits-all interface to multiple functionalities is also bound to sacrifice some usability along the way.
Carrying around multiple devices also sacrifices usability. It’s all about the trade-off. I hate having to carry stuff around with me.
It’s a barrier too. I don’t carry a standalone digital camera with me wherever I go, so 99% of the time I can’t take photographs of *any* quality.
If I had a mobile phone with a camera built in, I’d have a camera with me 99% of the time, so I’d be able to take photographs, even if a digital camera could get a much better picture if I happened to have one with me. The difference in quality between a low-res photo and no photo whatsoever is much, much larger than the difference in quality between a low-res photo and a high-res photo.
I’m not against convergence per se. I’m against convergence for the hell of it and that’s what it feels like here.
I can see your point of view as far as accepting a trade-off in functionality in order to save space. But that’s exactly what it is: a trade-off. I can eat my food with a swiss-army knife, I still prefer to use cutlery.
My main problem remains lifespan. Unless mobiles reach a price point where they become throwaway devices, and in that case you still have environmental problems to deal with, I won’t necessarily wan’t to replace the various “functions” at the same time.
I must be an old fogey I guess.
I like the idea of having a mp3 player built in my cell phone, better than having a built in camera anyway. I don’t see why they should have different life span. If they have it’s because cell phone are so cheaply built I think. But the mp3 format will remain the same until it is replaced by another format and then your phone-player will become obsolete. Anyway, camera or mp3 player are just features like a color screen or polyphonic ringings, sometimes useful, sometimes not, but no more than that I think.