Much in the way that the 7-inch tablets
were criticized as being too small to be considered a real tablet
until the success of Amazon's Kindle Fire, Samsung's
Galaxy Note (at 5.5-inches) was criticized as too big for a
smartphone when it was shown at the CES (consumer electronic show) in
Las Vegas. Once it and its successor the Galaxy Note II showed some
success more companies have decided that this is the right direction
to go and are now coming out with their own versions of what has been
deemed “phablets” (bigger than a smartphone but smaller than a
tablet). Apple was one of the first to jump on this new trend,
although not to such an extreme, with their increasing the size of
the iPhone
to 4-inches. Since then Sony’s
5-incher, Huawei’s
6.1-inch and a few others have also joined in the rank of this
new trend in mobile devices.
These “phablets” aren't exactly a
new trend in handheld technology. In the early 1990's a company
called Psion started a trend with their Series
3. Once again Apple was the first ones to jump on this new trend
with their Newton that was released in 1992. The then CEO at Apple.
John Scully, dubbed these new devices PDA's (personal data
assistants). Soon other companies, such as, Nokia, Microsoft, Palm
and others joined in on this new trend. The PDA's started to fall out
of favor shortly after the turn of the century when smartphones came
onto the market and hand a wider variety of applications that could
run on them.
Now, over a dozen years since the
hayday of the PDA's we see sometimes trends tend to circle back. Even
though the new “phablets” are far and above in versatility and
power they can still find their roots back in those PDA's form over
20 years ago.
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