The Smartphone Takeover

It’s another one of those potentially garbled posts written on my phone when I should be sleeping, I’m afraid, but as I start this, the thought occurs to me that that’s probably something worth discussing.

My phone is a HTC Desire, running on Android. It has a load of applications available and more than a few installed. The screen’s great to type on, the internet’s fast and for the most part, everything works as well as you’d expect, perhaps more so.

I’ve got applications for almost everything on this, but most of them are productivity and organisation-based. I’ve got my Google Calendar set to synchronise between my phone, my work PC’s Outlook and Thunderbird on my home system, I have my Dropbox and Google Docs on here, not to mention WordPress and Tumblr apps plus the standards like Tweetdeck and Facebook. All in all, it’s an excellent toy and I often feel like it’s like having and intermediate solution when I’m not near my PC.

But where does that end? Once a decent PhotoShop app arrives, do I ditch the PC completely? I don’t see it happening with me, but I know people that have all but abandoned their computers in favour of their phones or iPads – and why not?

I can’t answer for others, but I just don’t feel that typing with my thumbs on a touchscreen will ever replace beating words out of my keyboard, I like my large dual screen setup too, but ultimately, as great as my phone is for working on things on the move, I just don’t see it ever being more than that. As liberating writing a short story at the club can be – and believe me, it is – I just can’t see me replacing the geek thrill I get from two monitors, a roaring array of fans and a belting speaker system with a tiny phone in the long term.

If the Desire’s anything to go by, we’re a long way away from a battery that’s going to last long enough to replace the home computer or laptop anyway.

Phones are great and they’re getting better but as much as I love this thing, and as convenient as it makes things like blogging, I just don’t see me putting the home computer out to pasture in favour of it. That said, I might buy a tablet PC in the not too distant future.