The gadget era

iPhones. iPads. I don't really get the craze on gadgets these days.

Do most of these gadget-owners even use up to 10% of what their gadget can do?

As for me, I don't want an iPhone or an iPad. I admit, the iPad is tempting as an "all-books-in-one" thing. But reading while flipping the pages is more fun than reading off a screen. (a friend who's an Apple fan told me that the iPad has a page-flipping animation...but that's still not the same thing - we can't feel those pages, can we? :P )

I think I prefer to have my phone just do mostly what a phone is meant for: calling in and out. I guess sms was a good invention. And I really like having a camera integrated in my phone...for those times when I don't have my camera on me. But I still like to use my "real" camera when I actually want to take photos.

I don't want to go online with my phone...I prefer using a computer for that. Simply because of the screen size, actually. I want the font to be big, not tiny like in an sms.

Handphones have become like portable laptops these days. Wait, did I say portable laptops? Laptops are already portable. But yeah, a phone is even more portable than a laptop.

But you see, if you want to surf the 'net on your phone, it needs a bigger screen. Bigger than the old Nokia 4-lines-per-display (which led to lots of creative sms-es, actually). And that is why handphones are getting bigger and bigger (after getting smaller and smaller). I still prefer my phone to be compact. They're keeping phones thin, but the "area" size is really going up...the new "phone-computers" can't fit comfortably in your pocket any more (unless if you're wearing cargo pants).

I don't really like touchscreens, either. A lot of new phones have touchscreens, and I hope that they will continue making those with keypads, so that I won't need to switch to a touchscreen in the future.

I think I read an article once (I can't remember where) about phone manufacturers (or was it the manufacturers of some other item?) adding lots of features into their gadgets. Unnecessary features, actually, but that way they add "value" (albeit unwanted value) to their gadget, so they can sell it for more. And since consumers can't say they don't want those features (they aren't made optional, you see), they have to take them (and pay for them).

And I guess there's marketing as well. If you do your marketing right, you can convince consumers that they want something that they don't need (or even better, that they need something they don't need) I think that is how these new gadgets became to popular. Good marketing.