Windows Phone Thoughts: Smartphone? PDA? Which Way Do I Go?

Decisions, Decisions…
When trying to decide whether you need a PDA or a smartphone, the first thing you’ll need to consider is what is the problem you are trying to solve? Let’s work through a couple of scenarios to help you work out what you need. I’ve intentionally chosen scenarios that are quite different, extreme if you will. But I think they serve to show the fundamental difference between these two devices.

The Road Warrior
OK, so you do a bit of travelling but not enough to justify buying a notebook or Tablet PC. You need to be able to take some notes and manage your calendar while on the road (making and changing appointments and setting tasks in a To Do list).

The Manager
You’re out of the office occasionally and carry a laptop during your extensive travel. When out and about you need to be able to read your calendar but, as your assistant actually manages your schedule, you rarely type information into it yourself.

The Road Warrior is a remote data manager. He or she needs to be able to update data on the fly. Rather than carry a notebook PC (with the overhead of size and start up time) a PDA is an ideal compromise. You can use it for data input fairly easily, it’s easy to carry and has negligible start up time.

The Manager just needs to read his or her data and send and receive phone calls. Data input is not a big deal. As long as it has a clear display and simple navigation, a smartphone will serve nicely. The smartphone is a good solution for this as it saves the Manager from having to carry yet another device or a bunch of papers. With its support for remote connectivity with GPRS, the Manager can have PIM data updated while away with reasonable ease.

The Middle Ground
Now, hybrid devices like the Treo 600 and XDA2 form the middle ground in this equation. I’m going to take a stand and say that they will not be around for all that long. I predict that in a couple of years they will only be sold in small, niche markets and that smartphones that look like phones will take up their market share. I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with that type of device. However, they are too big to be carried around as an everyday cell phone and they are too complex for a mass market to use.

Devices like the Motorola MPx 200 are far easier to use and easily fit into the pocket of your jeans. Such a device lets you access the Internet, read your diary and keep your personal data synchronised with your desktop PIM. They are easy to use and have a familiar form factor.

Conclusion
If you were hoping that by now I’d have changed my mind and decided to tell you which is better PDA or smartphone - rest assured, I’m still not going to tell you. However, I’ll tell you what I use myself.

I’m currently using an iPAQ 2210 and two different cell phones (Sony Ericsson T68i and a T630). Also, over the last few weeks I’ve had the opportunity to use a number of different smartphones as part of a writing assignment for Australian Personal Computer magazine.
Armed with this experience, the combination of a PDA and a well equipped telephone works best for me. I use my PDA as a lightweight replacement for a notebook computer. With a VGA-out card and a folding keyboard and some great software there’s not much I can’t do with it.

However, in my “real’ job I act as a technology consultant for the senior management at the company I work for. Most of the managers there just need to be able to carry their diaries with them and don’t need the complexity of a PDA. A smartphone works well for them. They can keep the amount of hardware they carry around to a minimum and maintain a simple computing environment.

Both the PDA and the smartphone are great devices. Both serve their purposes well and it’s impossible to say which is better. The answer to which is better is about as easy to answer as what is the nicest food? It really just depends on what you want and like.