The End of Single-Purpose Devices

“Ahh, I love my modern digital lifestyle, especially when it comes to being out, whether traveling or just moving around the city. It’s great that I can walk around with a music collection that dwarfs my old college record collection, that I can have several books in my pocket ready to read whenever I want and that I can snap a picture or video of anything I see.

So what am I doing? Am I walking around with an MP3 player, an e-book reader, a digital camera and a digital camcorder?

Nope, just one device, my BlackBerry smartphone, which lets me listen to music, read books, take pictures and video, and, oh, yeah, make calls, play games, manage contacts and so on.

I do own a nice MP3 player, a very good digital point-and-shoot camera and a Flip camcorder, and, while I don’t own an e-book reader, I’ve had the chance to try out several. But I find that I’m leaving these devices at home more and more and just sticking with one multifunction device.

All of these single-purpose devices are excellent and in pretty much every case they are superior to the functionality in my smartphone. But it’s also true that in most cases my smartphone is good enough.”

Read the full article at http://etech.eweek.com/content/mobile_and_wireless/the_end_of_single_purpose_devices.html