Is it a bird .. a plane .. a phone or a tablet ?
Feb 03Looking at the tracking site of the Belgian post office for the umpteenth time today, i’m still anxiously waiting for the arrival of my new toy. Yep ! 🙂 It’s official, i’m about to purchase my SECOND Android device. After having played around with the Samsung Galaxy S for some months, I thought it was time to sell the device while it still had some value .. and “move on” along the path of Andoid-Device Ownership. Thanx to the charming @rrradiogirrrl I managed to get hold of an HTC Desire HD. Confess I must that, when I saw this device for the first time, I thought .. Whow .. thats big ! A co-worker of mine ( A lovely but very petite girl ) hauled what looked like a giant slab of aluminum out of her bag. In her hands it looked a little bit more like a small size Tablet device .. then a phone.
But the question is, where do we draw the line. Many of the tablets on the market these days (for example the dell streak) vary from 5 to 7.5 to 10 inches. Where exactly do we draw the thin line that says “this is a tablet, this is a phone ?” If we take the ability to make voice calls into account then the galaxy tab (at 7.5 inches) must be the biggest cellphone made in the 21st Century. Or do we draw the line a a certain screen size diameter ? If so ? Is the Desire HD with its 4.3 inch screen still a phone, where the Dell Streak is considered a Tablet device ?
For me the limits between a “phone” and a “tablet” have been fading away for quite some time now. When connected via Wifi I use my Ipod touch ( which used to be a media player remember ?) as a video camera, a digital snap cam, and a way to make voip calls using Skype or Facetime. Same goes for my Ipad which gives me the same functionality (without the camera though) on a bigger screen. Both devices could be considered “tablets” and, judging by their “communication capacities” both COULD be seen as “phones”. Activate your 3G Mifi or enable the 3G-Hotspot functionality on your smartphone to have these Ipods and Ipads hook up to your data plan .. and they become usefull both inside and outside the range of your wifi router .. as phones.
Having sold of my Galaxy S at the beginning of the week, I had to insert my sim card into an old “feature phone” we still had lying around at home. Without data connectivity or anything, the device just sat there in case somebody decided to “call me”. Guess what ? Nobody (except mum in law, who couldn’t reach me on skype) did. To me the Ipad became my main “communicator”. Twitter, Facebook, Email, Skype etc .. It was all there. So .. in why not call a tablet a phone .. and vice versa ?
As “voice” communication is slowly fading out to be replaced by “voip” communication the concept of a “phone” will slowly die out. Internet-enabled devices will allow us to take care of all our communication needs not only the concept .. even the memory of “phones” will start to fade away. Wether your “portable communicator” is viewed as a “phone” a “tablet” or a computer are differences that might still matter today .. but will be obsolete in the near future..
So i’m off to the post office to pick up my new … phone / tablet / communicator …whatever 🙂
