An article on MSN’s Tech and Gadgets section caught my eye today.

Called ‘Converging on a big mistake’, the article points out that technology convergenge - specifically in gadgets - isn’t so great, and can really make the water murky when it comes to functionality, as well as some other points.

To some extent, I agree with her. By cramming many gadgets in one, you tend to lose the essence of some of the functions that you’re putting in as extras. If you look at - oh, say - a mobile phone, you can get a mobile phone loaded with extras like video recording, still camera functionality, GPS, WiFi, and others.

On a mobile phone, the video camera quality is poor, the sound is tinny, the GPS is a little hard to use, and most mobile browsers are - I find - depressingly complex to use, and have cluttered interfaces.
This is because the mobile phone isn’t meant for this kind of use, meaning you do get reduced quality in the in-built gadgets.


I think many of the problems that come with convergence of technologies are merely problems that come with emerging technologies. Not least, the hardware isn’t originally designed to handle such a varied input.

I think that Steve Jobs put this best in his opening speech on the release of the iPhone, when he said that things like thumb keyboards and navigation are poorly suited for a device that has to work with potentially hundreds or thousands of seperate applications that all need slightly different interfaces.

My solution to these problems would be to sit Nokia, Apple, Samsung, LG, people like Intel, AMD, applications designers, Human Computer Interface experts, and users down at one huge conference, and kick off a big project to design a more universal open source set of standards that manufacturers could share, that were expandable with hardware add-ons.

The upside of this solution would be that mobile manufacturers could focus on the hardware of their devices, not the software.

Standards and expandability could be the saviour of convergence, allowing you to buy a phone, then add a camera, and a GPS module, and whatever else you want, as opposed to paying for functionality you don’t need.

As I said earlier, in my opinion many of the problems with convergence of technology, is that many of the devices that are being converged are leading to devices that are still evolving, and finding their place in people’s lives.

As such, I think that by buying into the newer, converged devices that do more than normal, you’re buying into an emerging technology that may not be so great, but may be genius, so check out what you’re buying thoroughly first.

In closing, I’ll leave you with the idea that a box of gadgets is better value than a gadget on it’s own, but when you cram things into a tiny box, some things get left out.

FYI

I write mainly for my website TheGrahamBaileyBlog (soon to have a new site), which you can check out here .

Jane Douglas is the editor for MSN’s Tech and Gadgets section oer at MSN UK, and has some interesting thoughts, too. Check her out, her article is here .

(Image credits to bury-osiol and lgcraftdes )