From electronic diaries to smartphones

Zatni Arbi, Contributor, Jakarta

Remember the days when people still took their day planners into the meeting room? These were basically diaries wrapped in rich leather jackets.

This status symbol usually came with a Cross or Montblanc pen. Cheap ballpoint pens stolen from a hotel would have been totally out of sync with the classy planners.

A lot of people still use day planners. When they run out of pages, they can order refills. And, of course, these people are proud of their handwriting skills.

However, the newer breed of professionals prefers to have their pockets bulging with electronic devices. These could include an electronic diary, a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) or a cell phone.

These people don't worry much if they forget their IDs, but they will not hesitate to turn back home if they accidentally leave their electronic gadgets behind.

Besides a cell phone, the PDA is usually regarded as the most important tool for supporting their daily activities.

By the way, who made the first PDA? It is hard to say, because the definition of PDA has evolved over time.

Generally, a PDA is defined as a battery-powered information device that can be held in one hand. These are the most important features. Although a notebook computer may have more functionality than a PDA, it is not a PDA because you cannot hold it with one hand and operate it with the other.

Toshiba's Libretto is one of the closest notebooks to a PDA. But because you cannot use it for a day without an electrical outlet, it is not quite a PDA.

The PDA was born out of people's need to better organize their lives. The first PDA that really caught the public's attention was probably the Apple Newton. It was not really a device that you could comfortably place in the palm of your hand or read under the sun, but it did introduce a new way to organize people's lives; the electronic way.

Another product regarded as a pioneer of the PDA revolution was the Zaurus. Sharp introduced its Zaurus PI-3000 in 1993. Like Apple's Newton, the first three generations of Sharp's Zaurus line of PDAs had a monochrome screen that was not easy to read.

Being a pioneer in LCD technology, in 1996 Sharp brought out the MI-10DC, the first Zaurus to feature a five-inch color TFT screen. The company then added features such as synchronization with a PC, faxing capability, e-mail and even an Internet connection.

The Newton was much larger than the Zaurus, although it was less than half the size of a notebook from that particular era. It also introduced the touch screen for handheld devices. Now you could use a stylus to press and drag virtual buttons on the screen.

A main ingredient of a PDA is, of course, personal information management (PIM). This is a set of software applications that includes a daily schedule, contact list, to-do list, memos and notes.

There is usually a world clock, so when you are thousands of miles away from home you still have some idea whether your children are already asleep or are out playing baseball. An alarm on a clock is like a cut of lemongrass in your Tom Yam Kung soup.

As a PDA is actually a very tiny computer, it also has a processor, memory and input mechanism. It certainly requires an operating system, too. The most popular of the OSes are PalmOS, Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC and Linux. Sharp's Zaurus SL-6000 is just one example of Linux-based PDAs.

PDA makers keep adding new features. Not only can some of them send and receive faxes and e-mails, some are also equipped with Wi-Fi and USB connections. Some PDAs also come with a digital camera, MP3 player and the software to display the pages of e- books.

Cellular handset makers were at the same time adding more or less the same features to their products. Eventually, a convergence took place.

PDAs began to offer cell phone functionality (O2 Xda was one of the first), while cell phone handsets began to offer PDA features. Now we have a new breed of gadget called the smartphones.

In fact, as you may already know, smartphones have been doing much better in the market than PDAs. It is easy to understand why: if you can get one device to do the job of two devices, why should you have two devices?

The most popular smartphones include the Sony-Ericsson P901 and Nokia Communicator 9500. Of course, there are devices such as the Treo 650 that still have the design of a traditional PDA. It has a very large screen, a QWERTY keyboard, etc., and as a result it is rather bulky.

The big question is whether smartphones will completely kill off PDAs?

If you ask Enny, who works at a well-known gadget store in Mal Taman Anggrek, West Jakarta, she will explain to you why this is unlikely to happen.

"There are people who still prefer to have both a PDA and a cell phone. It is easier for them to check their data and talk on the cell phone at the same time," she said.

But wouldn't a Bluetooth headset help them do this? With this accessory, users could hold their smartphone right in front of their eyes and still maintain the phone connection.

"Some people do not feel comfortable using a cell phone this way. Besides, if they accidentally hit the 'Hang up' button on the screen while searching for info that they wanted to share with the person they were talking to, they would have to redial the number," explained Enny.

She should know, as her store sells the most popular PDAs and smartphones on the market. "We sell secondhand PDAs and smartphones, too."

According to her, university students and young office workers prefer PDAs for storing their data and cell phones for making their calls. For this reason alone, PDAs may never be completely replaced by smartphones.

And there is another reason why PDAs will likely be around for quite some time. Think of companies with a lot of canvassers and salespeople in the field, such as distribution and pharmaceutical companies. The sales and field force automation applications that they use would work ideally with PDAs. While talking with their customers, they could check product availability, the latest price updates and the status of their orders just by touching a couple of buttons on their PDA screen.

Enny is probably right. PDAs will continue to serve a certain segment of users, even as smartphones become more and more popular each day.