Cell Phones of Today...Cell Phones of Tomorrow

I remember back in the old days when cell phones just made calls. That was before handset manufactures started integrated every single handheld item we carried - digital camera, MP3 player, PDA, etc. - into their cell phones. They were primitive, had monochromatic screens...but they did what they were supposed to do, and they did it well.

Phones today are all-in-one devices, Jack-of-all-trade/master-of-none devices that do everything, but do nothing as well as the stand-alone counterpart could. Today's cell phones are decent MP3 players, but the sound quality just isn't up to par with stand-alone MP3 players; they're okay as digital cameras, but don't really replace your stand-alone digital camera in terms of photo and video quality; they can perform all the functionality of a PDA, but with a franction of the speed.

I'm not ripping on these all-in-one phones (I just got my own LG nV2 myself, and I love it), but I think that phones worked better when they just made calls. The quality-for-convenience tradeoff is something that all companies know consumers are willing to make (it's why we go to McDonalds instead of making meals at home).

At this point you're probably wondering if this rant has a point. Well, actually...yes. I make all these points because of one simple thing that I ponder. How will handset manufactures make phones in the future? We've already got several companies manufacturing cell phones with touch screens (quite a nice idea for more convenient navigation). But what devices will we see implemented into our cell phones in the future? Will handset manufactures continue to cram features into our cell phones, overloading them and making them virtually useless due to an oversaturation of features? Or will handset manufactures focus on making cell phones do what they do now better than they currently do it. I know one thing for sure...with people starting to get rid of the home phones in favor of using their cell phones exclusively, cell phones are big business now, and as the cell phone market keeps growing, handset manufactures are going to do everything they can to get as many consumers using their devices...and hopefully using their cell phones to replace some of their old ones.