One of the things I most enjoy about Jerry is that instead of just grumbling about the status quo under his breath, he actually puts his gripes into coherant sentences so that we - his readers – can tell him if he is on track or raving about random nothingness.
Jerry’s rants appear regularly on Smartphone Thoughts, and his latest, entitled Smartphones are not Toasters, is a subject that I find quite interesting…
He says,
“I would like to start the New Year off by bringing up one of my biggest irritations. Smartphones are not music players! I know I am in the minority here. I just have a basic belief that when a thing tries to do too many things, it does none of them well. Remember the Motorola iTunes phone? That’s my point; you probably don’t because it was a disaster. Smartphones are getting very good at doing a few things. Being a music player shouldn’t be one of them.”
My feeling is that while I like to have a multi-purpose device, such as a phone that can sync with Outlook in order to keep my contacts and appointments straight, or a phone that can play an occasional MP3, I don’t necessarily want my phone to be my main PDA or my main music player. He talks mainly about using a Smartphone as a music player, but I think there is even more to it.
Battery life is a huge consideration on my part. I don’t want to miss an important call because my phone’s battery died while I was watching a movie or while I was listening to music. I also don’t want to worry that I have to stop reading my eBook when the battery hits a certain level because I then won’t be able to call anyone after my plane lands. You get the idea. 
Sometimes I do think that manufacturers are trying to cram too many things into our devices. While I think some functions go perfectly hand-in-hand – such as being able to access POP email from a PDA phone or being able to add certain applications and utilities on the fly, don’t you think that there a point where there might be too many bells and whistles on a mobile phone?
On a side note: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve added a program to a Smartphone or Pocket PC Phone Edition only to find out later, after several missed calls and left messages, that the program somehow affected the phone portion of my device in a negative manner. Since I am not usually making multi-million dollar deals over my mobile phone, this isn’t too serious. But what if it were? What if there were calls being missed, calls that I couldn’t afford to miss, because my phone was malfunctioning due to non-phone related additions?
Just for fun, check out this plush toaster I found – it’s a mobile phone holder and the piece of bread is a screen-cleaner. Cute, huh? 
Read Jerry’s full rant here, then be sure to post your thoughts. He is expecting flames.
Does he deserve roasting?
Or is he on to something? 
