By David Ponce
Patents are a dime a dozen, and they don’t mean much unless a product is actually made. Of course, that’s only true until the lawsuits start flying, but that’s beside the point here. We’re just trying to put some perspective on the announcement that a patent has been filed for a PDA device that contains a detachable mobile phone portion. This makes perfect sense actually, as PDAs are a dying breed, though they do still have some use. While mobile phones are more popular due to a bunch of reasons (they’re more portable, do about as much as your average PDA, etc), the extra bulk of a PDA device does allow for the cramming of more computing horsepower. Cramming horsepower is always good, so to combine the portability of a cellphone with the potential of the extra computational abilities of a larger PDA seem like a good idea.
Of course, like we said, a patent by itself doesn’t mean much. Especially when it’s filed by one Jay G. Partkh of unknown pedigree. We think the concept itself is a really good idea, though we’re thinking this could be just one example of patent squatting. Now, if ever an actual company decides to make something like this, they’ll have to come talk to Mr. Partkh.
[ Patent Page (PDF) ] VIA [ MobileWhack ]
patents are getting silly, its all about money
WOW, you can connect a monitor to it … WOW-zers. It looks like a DVI connection on the bottom.
Its all about smart phones now, they are the same size as PDAs basically are PDAs with a built in cell phone without the wasted time of removing a device from it. I guess for the removable cell phone there must be two separate batteries.
I don’t think that is DVI connection, theres no “crosshair” interface on the left/right side. It looks like a basic drawing of some proprietary connection port that coincidentally looks like a DVI connection, but if it were a DVI it would be useless.
Why cant you just have a mobile phone with PDA features? 😛
No… I think it’s a NuBus connector on the bottom, so you can plug it into your old Mac II.
But seriously, this reminds me a little of the VisorPhone which was a springboard module for the Handspring Visor. If you didn’t want to lug that around, there was a third party that made a very simple interface (12 keys + send / hangup.) The benefit was that the phone wasn’t so honkin’ huge.
I think that’s what these guys are going after… you have a regular small / stylish phone for typical use. When you want to do web browsing or email checking, you plug it in. Sort of like what we were supposed to be able to do with Bluetooth.