who hasn't been waiting to stop carrying 3 or 4 different devices around?
Clearly, the iPhone is a bit of a surprise, cause its built-in camera isn't even good for smartphone standards, which are already low, lacking proper shutters or even the semblance of decent lenses.
But people buy the iPhone for prestige and the retard-proof interface, so i guess they don't even notice that their photos are invariably crummy.
The old truth is, that a bad shot is better than no shot, so for now, smart phones are going to clear out the low end of dedicated cameras. Camera makers will either have to move upmarket or include smartphone functionality into their cameras, which I would very much welcome :)
Smartphones already have screens, processing power and UI, so the more ways you can use that with the many built-in peripherals, the more valuable it is to users, and the less cost for companies to bring new features to market.
There is no reason why a smartphone navigation system should be worse than a dedicated one, it should actually be better, cause a company doesn't need to focus on building any hardware at all, they can spend all their time on making the software and UI perfect.
Should only be a matter of time for tiny PC-Express Card slots to become available in Smartphones, where users can add their own choice of functionality underneath the battery, like medical scanners, geiger counters, athmospheric sensors, just about anything we've seen on tricorders... Maybe the phones get thicker or longer with some of the bulkier addons, but I see a smart phone as a ubiquitous computing platform, that will become more extensible as we go, and can be used to scan and measure anything we can do now with a vast array of dedicated devices.
Smart phone voltage meter, resistance meter, oscilloscope, anyting could be added with minimal effort, when tiny expansion slots become the norm.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
