Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Fall is the best time of year: the bugs are gone, it is warm, but not hot (in New England at least), and gadgets are all pimping to get you to buy them as holiday presents.  This year’s announcements are different though.  The big question this year is, “Has convergence killed gadgets?”  My short answer: yes.

Cameras

Hear me out.  This year, the iPhone just become the most popular camera on flickr.  The. Most. Popular. Camera.  Is it the awesomeness of 3 megapixels?  No.  Is it the groovy focus?  No.  It is the ease of getting photos to other places (and that’s without MMS).  That’s bad news for the pair of Casio cameras I just wrote about this morning.

GPS

How about GPS?  Funny thing, a $4.99 app navigated me 15 miles offshore safely into harbor as my back up GPS last week.  My main GPS, a $500 handheld, ran out of juice, but my iPhone kept charging on.  $4.99 beats $500 every single time and Navionics just updated their app to 3.0 and looks to have added a whole bunch of new features.  Sweet.

Gaming

My kids want Nintendo DS.  Their cousins have them, so now my kids want them.  Only my kids love playing on my iPhone and touch.  My kids are not serious gamers, and actually I prefer they not be.  I am actually considering buying an iPod that can handle App Store games for my 6 year old.  Why?  Simply because I really don’t want to buy $50 games.  Call me cheap, an idiot, what have you, but as a parent, these are the choices I see.  Free and $0.99 is far more compatible to his allowance (and mine) not to mention our attention span.

Video

See cameras.  PDA functionality.  Ditto.  Music and video seem like bonuses at this point.  What can’t an iPhone or touch replace at this point?  Anyone?  Will it be the best anything (sadly, including just a phone)?  No, but it does well enough to make you almost forget that.  I don’t mean to limit this argument to Apple products, as Android could offer as many apps some day—it just isn’t today.

Everyone will blame depressed sales on the economy, the weather, the moon’s orbit.  But now, you and I know its that darn magic phones influence that is robbing sales of other gadgets.