> Maybe in a year or two we will wonder what possessed anyone to think that trying to have a mobile phone and a browser on the same device was a good idea. Time will tell...
Time has already told that one. In certain areas of the world, like Japan and other parts of the “Far East,” phones and browsers have been the same device for years, if not decades. Japan especially never had a fully blown PC culture, so they standardized on text messaging over e-mail, “emoji” instead of emoticons, and q-codes over URLs. Web browsing and telephony are both communication activities more than computational ones, so there is a certain logic and cultural precident in place to move the communication activities away from computers to more dedicated and portable appliances.
Time has already told that one. In certain areas of the world, like Japan and other parts of the “Far East,” phones and browsers have been the same device for years, if not decades. Japan especially never had a fully blown PC culture, so they standardized on text messaging over e-mail, “emoji” instead of emoticons, and q-codes over URLs. Web browsing and telephony are both communication activities more than computational ones, so there is a certain logic and cultural precident in place to move the communication activities away from computers to more dedicated and portable appliances.