Where Are All the New PDAs and Smartphones?

Posted on 12 May 2007 by


Is it just me or does it seem like there haven’t been a lot of new devices lately? For quite a while there were announcements of a new PDA or Smartphone every few weeks. Lately it has been eerily quiet, and the remakes of devices for different phone carriers don’t count. Perhaps we are waiting for WM6, but even in the earlier days, with new operating systems in the wings, we saw new devices coming out pretty regularly.

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Pete Paxton over at Smartphone Thoughts (where my posts can also be found) has posted about the new HTC Vox, which I do like. The problem is that it isn’t even a 3G phone! Mitchell Oke has posted on these pages about the new HTC Kaiser. Nice, but basically it is just a remake of the HTC “fill in the blank” variety device. The tilting screen is kind of nice though. So tell me do I just have the blinders on? I miss the old days when HTC had a new device every week; even if it was overkill, I still enjoyed the madness!

This post was written by:

- who has written 18 posts on Gear Diary.

Jerry Raia is a full time Airline Captain when he is not playing with all the latest gadgets he can get his hands on. He is also a Certified Flight Instructor (CFI-AIM). His primary interests are with Smartphones and more recently, Photography. He was a Unix programmer in the 1980s and wrote assembly for HP proprietary handhelds like the HP71B. His interest in handheld devices led to being a beta tester for Windows CE (Pegasus), the first incarnation of the Windows Mobile operating system. He is also a Contributing Editor on Smartphone Thoughts. Jerry’s interest in handheld computing goes all the way back to the HP25 calculator that came out in the mid 1970s and was one of the first programmable calculators.

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  • http://www.magnusson.ca/blog.html Chris Magnusson

    Variety is good. Too many similar models make for lackluster sales.

  • http://www.andysocial.com AndySocial

    Another point is the complete focus on smartphones, to the exclusion of PDAs. Look through the new Palm Blog – nary a mention of a new Tungsten or LifeDrive, just blather about Treos. That’s all well and good, but some of us choose not to have a cell phone (shocking, isn’t it?), or have no need for one. Personally, my commute to work is under ten minutes, and I cannot take any personal electronics into my office anyway, so I’d use a cell phone twenty minutes per day? Eh.

    But, my 3 year-old Clie, that has been heavily used in more personal settings, rather than business settings.

  • blueshockey69

    Judie, starting in June, you will begin to see the onslaught of new devices, more then likely starting with the iPhone of course, from my understanding there are a minimum of 5 new devices from Cingular and at least 3 from Verizon expected this year. Patience is a virtue.

  • Jerry Raia

    I’m the one with no patience however. :)

  • http://www.geardiary.com Judie Lipsett Hughes

    @blueshockey69 – Jerry actually wrote this…but I tend to agree with him. After all the CES, 3GSM & CTIA excitement, things have just been so quiet lately. I’m ready to get my hands on some new gadgets! :-)