A few months ago I took hold of the 4.1” Toshiba TG01 and said no! It’s too big for my pocket.
It’s the size that really struck me. For a phone, it’s HUGE! There’s simply no way that the average person is going to be able to use this as a 24/7 phone. I don’t mean to imply that the TG01 is meant to be a 24/7 phone but it proves that convergence between the full internet minimum screen resolution of 800×480 and the 24/7 total convergent device is simply not going to happen for most people.
Yesterday, following news on the HTC Leo, a Snapdragon powered 4.3” Slate phone that we covered a while back, WMPoweruser asks the same question.
It seems that most of you readers really are happy with big screen devices.
52% of UMPCPortal readers voted ‘No’ 4.3” is not too big for a pocketable phone.
64% of WMPowerUser readers voted ‘No’ 4.3” is not too large on the HTC Leo.
This drive for convergence doesn’t bring me any closer to my ideal 3-device strategy but I’m happy to accept that there are a ton of people out there that want ONE device to cover phone, MID, navigation, camera and a certain amount of productivity tasks. All I can say is that that the voting numbers probably represent a niche of high-end gadget and mobility users and that I fit into a class of people that doesn’t wear cargo pants!
On a serious note though, I find this drive for convergence a bit cheap from a marketing perspective. I think the long-term practicalities of converged devices are limited, that quality suffers due to physical constraints and that eventually, people end up buying dedicated tools for their tasks anyway. The marketing people just want you to THINK that it can do everything. Don’t they?
I’m guessing we’ll have a good discussion about this below and that someone will say – ‘the best camera/pnd/pmp/umpc/mid is the one you have with you.’ You have a good point. I’m off to have another sleepless night over the matter.
