Powerful gadgetry

Three years ago, Stephen Gates received a new cellular phone that doubled as an MP3 music player.

He looked down at the device and wondered why he would want one gadget that did the work of two when he already had a functional phone and music player.

Mr. Gates, senior manager of communications for the Arlington-based Consumer Electronics Association, soon arrived at the same eureka moment that customers and companies alike have been having ever since.

“It just hit me,” he recalls of how the gadget would make life easier for Metro commuters like himself. “I don’t have to do the fumble maneuver. I just hit one button.”

Call them smart phones, hybrid toys or convergence wonders, today’s multipurpose devices pack the features of several once-unique technologies in one ever-shrinking package. Some gadgets might make James Bond sit up and take notice.

The cellular telephone is the unifying element so far.

“Seventy percent of the American public has a cell phone,” Mr. Gates says. “That’s the one device they’ll have on them. They may or may not have a [personal digital assistant] or a digital camera.”

PalmOne’s Treo 600 phone, for example, combines a mobile phone, a digital camera, Web browsing and e-mail capacity all in one unit.

“The more you can do with one device, the less you have to carry,” Mr. Gates says.

The first smart gadgets weren’t really all that bright. Gadget gurus mostly gobbled them up; their limited memories and modest battery power made them more novelty acts than functional tools.

In just a few short months, technology leapt so far forward that cellular phone sizes shrank while the number of features grew.

Microchips could process information faster than before. Tiny lithium batteries suddenly offered longer operation times.

All the fancy gadgetry could end up hurting sales of these devices, cautions John Chier, public relations manager for Kyocera.

Mr. Chier, whose San Diego-based company produces a number of versatile phones, says customers tell the company via surveys that they want simplicity in their cellular phones.

“People are excited about convergence, but they don’t want to be overloaded. There’s a backlash against the gadget mind-set,” he says.

Story Continues →