THINQon : HTC HD2 - stepping beyond the iPhone

Gadget Room Gadgets HTC HD2 - stepping beyond the iPhone

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Arthur Mont

HTC HD2 - stepping beyond the iPhone

Latest Post: November 25, 2009 at 12:04 AM

70 followers

I just got the HTC HD2 (Leo) and it's magnificent. I won't write a review of it as there are plenty of those on the net and they do it better than I would, as they have more what to compare it to, all essentially agreeing it's great, except maybe the sound quality (which will probably improve with an update/cooked rom) and camera (which are usually bad with HTC). My short review is that it's an exceptional "cell phone," let's call it, but should we call it that?

I say stepping beyond the iPhone because while the iPhone changed cell phones completely, the hd2 is perhaps really the first of a new kind of machine which connects the Kindle, netbooks, and cell phones (together with GPS and cameras). The lines between these are thinning, and soon cells will have e-paper or e-ink, perhaps opening in a scroll like fashion from the cell, and/or projectors, and it will be like reading the kindle and watching movies and browsing the web on netbooks (which are becoming similar to notebooks). It's not there yet but we are not talking decades here but merely a couple of years. What used to be cell phones are soon no more than easy to carry desktops, hopefully with screens which will enable easy reading a la the Kindle.

There are discussions here on what the kindle will mean for reading and the future of the book which I linked to above (from the word Kindle). How would these new mini-offices change us?
How would they further change the way we read? The Kindle still, being a different machine specifically designed for reading, is somewhat conducive to the old act of reading even if it changes it. These are not.
Being mini-offices how will they change the way we interact in the world?
Any ideas?

Products Discussed

HTC Touch HD2 Windows Mobile 6.5 Sim-Free Mobile Phone

Reply to:

Edna Stern

November 24, 2009 at 10:42 PM

86 followers

Hi Arthur,

If we start to carry our offices with us everywhere we might become a new species, of the human-snail kind. It might be very convenient but I doubt it is healthy to have the option to permanently work wherever we are. It is not clear whether we would have the wisdom to set the limits for what is good for us, not to mention it’s a lot more complicated (i.e. a combination of what is good for the company, the other workers, the family and so on).

The other point which makes me skeptical is the passionate tone I hear people use towards these instruments, it’s a tone of admiration and this admiration brings on addiction. What Assaf describes in his post on the Kindle, is a new kind of disorder brought on by an addiction to the Kindle, and why not add Iphone/HTC HD2 to it? It’s a fact that people who have them can’t stop having their head permanently in them. Assaf talks humorously about the Kindle addiction, because reading is always beneficial, so this addiction will probably bring a lot of positive elements, and yet I think that the fact that he can get so easily a reading material of a certain kind, will be an influence on his reading choice. He might bother less to go out into libraries and get other stuff which isn’t on his Kindle, quite understandable - considering he is already reading 5 books simultaneously on the Kindle. But is it all gain? I personally prefer to use my old Nokia E61, very convenient for writing, excellent quality of phone with wi-fi and not too tempting to take out all the time and play with it permanently.

Products Discussed

Nokia E61i - Smartphone - T-Mobile - WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM - mocha

This post is referenced by the following other contributors:

Hugh Dupin

in "What to do about cell phones?"

(Gadget Room)

Reply to: or

Martin Howells, Trained in pure mathematics, physics,...

November 25, 2009 at 12:04 AM

13 followers

Dear Edna,

I have an iPhone 3GS and my experience is that it is not just an office. Last night, I typed "Piano" into the search field on the iTunes store and up came dozens of pianos from Finger Piano to Virtuouso Piano to a mini synthesizer. Even a trumpet leapt out. There was also, of all things, a Zen Piano. Inspired by your music, I downloaded one and commenced playing like a master, not difficult since I selected a preprogrammed tune. It brought back memories of the days when as boy I learned to play classical music on a guitar. Later I spent time studying the mathematical structure of Bach's music in that lovely book by Hofstadter: Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. So I fell to thinking about creativity and self reference and slippage. These are concepts and when I thought again about your post it seemed to me that maybe part of the reason you have reservations about this technology is that an addiction is perhaps inimical to what flows from that creative spirit. At the same time, if we use these devices carefully it can be very interesting and productive. So the approach was key and may even generate a fugue to remember!