Pockets face techno over-stuffing

IS THAT A PDA in your pocket or are you just glad to see me? These days, with the amount of portable devices that people are buying up, the answer is pretty obviously technologically slanted. Unless, of course, it's Keira Knightley asking the question.

The problem remains. Right now, if I am travelling somewhere, I will carry a P900 for my phone and PDA requirements, an iPod for music, a GameBoy Advance for gaming, as well as wallet and keys. That's a lot of gear, and that's once I got rid of the PDA+Phone combo for the P900. Why can't this stuff all be combined?

There's a lot going on in the portable device market right now, and it's one of the most exciting areas of technology. Gadgets have that 'must-have' appeal that brings in Average Chap users as well as techno-geeks. I'd like to talk about a few of these things this week.

First up is the battle in the gaming market between the soon-to-be-released Nintendo DS and Sony PlayStationPortable. The DS is the first out of the box at the end of November in America, whilst the PSP is launching in Japan in December. The first amazing thing about these consoles is the pricepoint - both of them are around £100. For the Nintendo DS, which packs N64-level graphical hardware along with WiFi and two screens, including a touch screen, this is pretty good value - considering the 2D-only Gameboy Advance retailed at around £90 when first released. For the PSP, which is also equipped with WiFi but has graphics capabilities on a PlayStation2 level, it's incredible how much has been stuffed into such a cheap package.

Despite the similar price point and the fact that they are, superficially similar objects, they couldn't be more different. The DS is an attempt at what Nintendo does so well - innovation in gaming. Nintendo has long been the videogame purists platform, with Zelda titles going hand in hand with pure gaming experiences like Super Monkey Ball, Animal Crossing, or even Tetris, if we go way back. Many people view their stance as immature and hold that Nintendo is for kids - this simply isn't the case. The dual-screen will genuinely drive some new gaming types.

The PSP, based on the PlayStation brand, is going to be more of the same thing that we expect from the name - big-name game licenses, sleek hardware, mainstream 'adult' appeal. For much of the market, adult games focus on subject matter and aesthetics rather than any intellectual or pure gaming appeal, and it is surely here that Sony will win over adult gamers. The PSP also plays audio and video, and it is here that things get interesting.

You see, convergence is now really starting to hit portable devices. Phones have become game-playing devices ( cfNGage). Some phones have become personal data devices (such as the P900). Some PDAs have become phones (o2 XDA). Everyone wants to be a music player to rival the iPod.

The competition to beat the iPod at its own game has been going for a while now, and it shows no sign of actually going anywhere. The iPod, you see, is a very specific user model - its very good at what it does and nothing else, and bucks the trend for convergence. It provides music to you whilst you do other things, and it provides you will all the music that you want, and the user interface is perfect for giving you that.

Let me explain to you why I think the PSP will fall foul of the same traps that iPod competitors have. The DS is good at one thing - playing games. It is designed purely for that and nothing else and its user interface is perfect for that. The PSP is not designed to play music - it is too bulky to stick in your pocket as one does an iPod. It's not designed to watch films - yes, it has a cool screen, but one won't whip it out and watch a film on the tube as one will with games titles - portable devices are designed to be on the go, and one is rarely in a position to watch a whole film on the go.

The iPod has fallen foul of this in recent days too. The release of the photo iPod is all well and good - store your digital photos on your device and you will always have them with you. Err, but why would you want them? It is not as if one is likely to casually browse through photos just to pass time. There is no advantage of having them portable, especially not to look at them on a tiny screen. If you really have that much need for portable photos, you can get a cheap Windows notebook with a 14" screen for practically the same price as the photo iPod.

The trouble appears to be that most designers really don't think about usage models when they design this stuff. The iPod was an example of a product that was perfectly designed to fit a use, but it's useless for everything else. A gaming device is not a phone - user interface requirements dictate that. Likewise, a phone is not a music player - phones have to be simple and light with mainstream appeal, not packing 40GB hard disks to compete with the iPod.

At the top of the article I moaned about the fact I had so many devices to carry in my pocket when I went somewhere, and wondered if they couldn't be combined somehow. To answer my own question, they can't be combined because any such device inevitably ends up as less than the sum of its parts, because so many compromises have to be made to make it acceptable to all its constituent parts. A combined gaming device / video player / music player / phone / PDA could never be as good as an iPod for storage or interface; could never match the simplicity of a phone keypad for data entry; could never match the screen size of a laptop. It even begs the question - should I carry both a PSP for my adult content titles and a DS for my hardcore gaming?

This leads me to next week's column - why can't men have handbags? [I'm not running that. Ed.] µ

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