BBC: 2005 Looking Good for Gadgets

wiggles writes "The BBC says, 'The relentless pace of development in the hi-tech world and rampant competition in many of its sectors, particularly among mobile phone firms, all suggests that 2005 is going to be a very good year.' They talk about that (overused?) buzzword 'convergence' and the implications for gadgets in 2005 as we further approach the 'convergence' asymptote. So what 2005 gadgets are Slashdotters looking forward to?" I'm forecasting that 2006 and 2007 are ALSO looking good for gadgets. You heard it here first...

Watches that communicate with one another

[Anonymous Coward]

The rumor is out there [spotstop.com]...

WiFi phone

[Anonymous Coward]

I am getting one of the new wireless VoIP phones. A friend of mine has one and it is absolutely awesome. As long as you live in the city or an areas where there are many access points it is the best phone you can imagine. Crystal clear calls worldwide with no noticeable delay at minimal bandwith consumption and no cost. WiFi phones rock!

Re:Home automation

[Gr8Apes]

wait for the zigbee [zigbee.org] stuff. Works with your existing G band wireless, no powerline issues, global standards. Should be way cool.

Re:WiFi phone

[ZakMcCracken]

Crystal clear calls... until there are 6 of you making calls at the hotspot! There are a lot of scalability problems with VoWiFi (concurrent users competing for bandwidth "collide" all the time, huge overhead for small packets, no call admission control...)

But vendors are clever: since the overhead is huge for small packets, they might as well use a high-quality 32 kbps codecs in there; so when you're trying out their solution with just one or two phones, you think "wow, the quality is better than any phone I ever tried! I can't believe there's so much crap said about VoWiFi..."

But just wait until more of these phones make calls at the same location, along with PCs downloading data, and no call admission control to "queue" users. You'll be happy to have your cellular phone then....

E-paper

[Foofoobar]

E-ink has made a partnership with a company that prints circuits on plastic making e-paper a reality. They go into mass production in 2005 making the paperless office a potential reality.

Killer smartphone

[gilesjuk]

A mobile phone with:

MP3 playback, superb sound quality and standard 3.5mm socket.

GPS receiver and the ability to use standard GPS software for smartphones.

A very good keyboard (not spongey), either a standard phone type or qwerty as long as the device doesn't look stupid.

SDIO compatible SD slot

Wifi

Good battery life

Good speakerphone

Expandable memory

Non-volatile storage

Re:The Perfect Phone

[perky]

Things I want on a phone:
1. Small
2. Lots of space for contacts
3. Synch with Outlook
4. Some flash memory with a USB socket, like a USB memory stick
5. Well designed UI
6. Good audio quality
7. Shold look recognisably like a phone
8. Predictive text

Things I don't want on a phone:
1. Camera
2. Video camera
3. Games
4. Audio recorder
5. mini qwerty keyboard
6. flashlight
7. GPS
8. Compass
9. Microsoft Office
10. A meda player

Things that are acceptable as long as they don't get in the way:

1. GPRS
2. Some kind of WAP/internet thing
3. Bluetooth
4. a Java runtime

Incidentally, I had the same phone as you until it broke. subsequent models have been larger and less easy to use.

Also, with reference to "must look like a phone", when Nokia released the 6230 last year, almost everyone I know bought one within 2 months. This was because it didn't look like it was designed by a 12 year old like the previous two years output.