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Smartphone vs camera, iPod, Sony PlayStation, PMP: The death of gadgets?
Smartphones like the Apple iPhone, Samsung Galaxy S and the Nokia N8 represent the very best of the mobile phone industry. These mobile giants have almost single-handedly killed off lots of other technologies, but is it time for dedicated cameras, MP3 players, games consoles and other gadgets to lie down and die? Read on to find out.
The biggest single area of improvement inside a smartphone is arguably a camera, with the Nokia N8 proving easily as capable as lots of dedicated cameras on the market. A phone is also a lot more convenient – it’s always in your pocket, you always keep it charged up, and it’s always easy to share your snaps afterwards.
When was the last time you took out a proper camera to a restaurant or a night out – when a mobile phone will do just as good a job for your Facebook snaps?
It doesn’t stop there though. Portable games consoles like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are fantastic for passing the time, but these gadgets have really suffered at the hands of smartphones. Although few smartphones can compete when it comes to graphics, they have a huge advantage when it comes to games, as you can download thousands of titles at the touch of a button, wherever you go.
Smartphones like the iPhone have also made a huge dent in MP3 player sales, as they’re every bit as good at playing music, without having to fill your pockets with other gadgets. The same goes for portable media players, with 3.5-inch and 4-inch screens on the latest smartphones making it easy to watch movies on the move.
However great mobile phones are at doing all of the above though, some of us don’t want one converged device. The best argument for having a separate MP3 player, games console or portable media player is battery life. When your MP3 player runs out of battery you can’t listen to music anymore, but when listening to music kills your smartphone, you can’t ring anybody, stay in touch, play games or any of the above.
For us then, it’s great that the mobile phone can do pretty much anything, but we still want dedicated devices to exist alongside – sometimes they’re just better.
We’d love to hear what you think though. Do you use your smartphone for everything? Is it the end for stand alone gadgets? Or does the lack of battery life frustrate you enough to take a separate MP3 player, gaming device, camera or other gadgets out and about?
User comments (4)
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Tonums03 June 2011
MP3 players dead because of smartphones? Yes, your probably correct. It's possibly true about portable games players too but........ How can any smartphone compare to playing games on a large-screen, HDTV with surround sound. They can't. Smartphones too are quite capable too of out-gunning the cheap point and shoot digital camera but look around you. Images on sites like Flickr or Picassa aren't swamped with those taken using a smartphone. The best images are those taken with DSLRs or bridge cameras. As good as they are a smartphone is and always will be a Jack of all trades, master of none.
Report as inappropriateJonathan Marshak05 June 2011
I use smartphone for gaming but still do use ds a lot. Music, just use phone but camera, have seperate Nikon L18 for that.
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