Mr Kleen wrote:it just feels like several different phones are
soooo close to what I want, I just wanted this thing to [magically] fix my biggest gripe about the iPhone but (as you stated) it will probably just be another piece of kit to lug around and keep charged.
Call it a fresh perspective on things I've had lately, but I was reflecting on Colin's statement about, oh, god, not another thing to keep charged, have a dongle for, etc., whilst also contemplating the amount of kit I can fit under the "seat cover" on my bike (it's about the size of a four-pack of redbull), because I happen to like that keyboard thingie.
It struck me that, if manufacturers concentrated on devices using less power, and storing what power they had more efficiently, that many of the "too many damn dongles" problems would go away. The seat cover in question, almost exactly this size:
is large enough to house and (theoretically, I suppose; there's always cloudy days) pull 2A @ 5.5v (a pretty typical phone widget charger) and keep a headset, hand-held keyboard (especially if any of these devices also had compact batteries to store charge when use but exposed to sun), and a 3g device with even slightly more powerful antenna than you'd expect to see on a handset. With the hand set you could do sms and get directions (e.g., very rudimentary, like ARM- or Geode-based interwebs), and with the headset you could make voice calls. From something smaller than your glovebox.
Correct me if I'm wrong on the power available from a surface like that if I'm way off, Zak, but
Froogle seems to think I'm not that far off. The point I'm making is just that if manufacturers would work on making their devices thinner, lighter, lower-power, and modular, we wouldn't have all these conversations about whether the iPhone had a better display or Blackberry had a more clickety keyboard...
You could just have as much or as little device as you wanted. I'm sure most of you have even seen the backpacks with solar kit in them.
Didn't some dude coin the term a while ago the "BAN," or "body area network," where a 1.5mbit network could be run across the skin, power could easily be drawn from the sun, and so on? Was the "B" maybe "bluetooth"? The only real question becomes what to connect power with (something like magsafe would be ideal, or mini-usb if you gotta on account of patents), and what protocol you use to pair and communicate. Bluetooth has of course been real successful, but is also power hungry. With close-proximity networks and BAN-style networks, you wouldn't even have to have that much power connecting the devices if there were a personal bus or a vehicular bus (especially if you took your hand/head set with you as a "satellite node" of the vehicle, which naturally has a larger power source and transmitter).
The point is, all the devices are out there to make exactly the device you (or me, or anyone) wants, it's just a matter of collecting the pieces and putting them together.
Ok, ok, </rant>. Sorry, got a little excited.
(and besides, Gabe, the "godphone" uses qubit-entanglement)
I just don't see it as something I'd use on a regular basis.