[hacker]

Originally Posted by peterg22

Also I don't want a converged device - yet. Apart from the implications of losing both my PDA and my phone with all that personal info on board I'm not convinced that battery life is good enough.

Converged devices will always be the wrong decision in the end anyway, for several reasons.

1. You can't decouple the converged parts and replace them with better, upgraded, other equivalents from other manufacturers or other form factors.
2. You always get a sub-par device in all regards. If you want a keyboard, you end up with a huge PDA (to compensate for the larger keyboard), or a microscopic keyboard, to compensate. Want a PDA/Phone? Now you either get a ridiculously-small screen, so you can fit the "phone" in your pocket, or you get an enormous phone, to compensate for the PDA-sized screen.
3. Battery life, as you mention, will significantly suffer in all respects, until we make some pretty monumental advances in battery life and consumption (OLEDS is one approach, there are some others).
4. Major major security hazard in many environments, to have a PDA coupled with a phone. Though this is all going to go away, because most government and validated environments are starting to ban ALL electronic devices outright, because these present an enormous risk to their environment (camera phone in a pharmaceutical company for example, taking a few quick snapshots of lab notebook data).

Basically, converging a device severely limits what you can do with it, despite the myths these vendors try to sell you on. Here is one scenario: You buy a Treo650 with Sprint service, and then relocate to say... New Zealand. Now your phone no longer works, and you have an overly-heavy PDA, with less than 50% functionality.

With a non-converged device, you can connect any phone to it, assuming you have the right connectivity options, such as Bluetooth or IrDA, for example. If your provider changes, simply get a new phone, and connect it to the same PDA you're used to.

I personally prefer not to have to have the phone and PDA attached in one device, because I have more flexibility with them separate. I can have the phone in my bag, and use my PDA to make calls through the phone (or for Internet access/email), and I can use my Bluetooth headset, no wires, no muss, and exceptional battery life. If I want a new headset, or a new PDA, and want to keep my phone, I just switch out the bits I need with new bits. The same goes for keyboards; there are dozens to choose from, if you decouple the keyboard from the device proper.

Yes, there are those that say "But I don't WANT to carry a phone and a PDA!", and I can see their point, but they are only a percentage of the rest of us. If the whole market changes to suit that percentage, the rest of us (and there are quite a significant number) will be sticking with our existing devices, or ones that do not "force" convergence. There are times I ONLY want to carry my PDA, or ONLY carry my phone, and converged devices don't allow this at all.