---------- A. Melon[SMTP:juicy@melontraffickers.com] writes: from the clueless dept:
Why would I want a PDA-phone hybrid?
Why do I have the uneasy feeling the newly announced Motorola/Palm product, due in 2002, may end up combining everything Palm knows about cell phones with everything Motorola knows about personal organizers?
I'm going to have to remember that line :-)
Is it that none of the current devices even comes close to being useful
for most people who already own a cell phone and a PDA? Dont take my word for it: Check out the MobilePlanet and iGO catalogs, where the latest wireless wonders are all on display. Sure, theyre cool, but are they useful?
Well, the Visor GSM phone plugin creates a relatively small increase in the size of the visor, based on photos. I carry both a cellphone and a Palm constantly, and the Visor device looks less bulgy than carrying both. It might be helpful from that point of view. The earlier Qualcomm PDQ phone/palmpilot is like carrying a brick in your pocket by comparison (I've got one in my desk - I don't use it).
And how about those new devices that are supposed to turn Palms and Visors into cell phones? Give me a break -- Im supposed to talk into something that looks like that? How useful can the combination really be? Cool? Yes. Practical? Hardly. And $299 seems a bit steep.
I'd use it, but the price point sucks.
Is this really necessary? <snip>
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20000926/tc/keep_your_phone_off_my_palm__1 .html
The real issue will be power consumption vs. mips for crypto. And user interfaces.
Well, on the visor speech input comes through the Visor's built-in mike, so it may be available to the processor for manipulation. The sound output is on a speaker built into the GSM phone module, and I kind of doubt if the data is available to a user program. You really need to get into a funny place in the stack - below A/D conversion, but above GSM packetization. I have greater hopes for doing encrypted voice-over-ip, if we want something that 's open source and user-verifiable. Peter Trei