Integrated VS Separated Technology

This day and age most people have a cell phone, a digital camera and an mp3 player. But what’s better? Having all these integrated into one item or have them separated?
There are ups and downs to each option, but the problem is finding which option suits you best, which one has more ups and less downs in your case.

The first option, having all your gadgets integrated in one item, usually a cell phone, is rather popular among people. As the photo above suggests, the example we will concentrate upon is the N80 model from Nokia. This is one of the new-generation phones that integrates all of the above. Let’s start with the camera: it’s a 3Megapixesl camera, with Macro function. It has a digital zoom, flash and video recording capacity. You can take photos with either 3Mpx resolution (the maximum available, with 2048×1536 pixels), 2Mpx, 1.3Mpx, 0.5Mpx or 0.3Mpx (MMS). Resolutions for video recording can be High (MP4), Normal (3gpp) or low (also 3gpp). The phone is equipped with audio (mp3 and wav, plus radio) and video playback. The phone’s memory is 128Mb, and an aditional 2GB can be added through a MiniSD Card. Also, like you would expect, it also serves as a mobile phone with 3G calls capability. It also works on a Symbian, and I would say I was not impressed at all by the handling. Small pictures needed a long time to load, not to mention large ones. It jammed often, therefore it has a lack of reliability.

Now for the “other” solution. I chose stuff I already own: a rather old phone (Nokia 2650), a not-so-old digital camera (Sony Cybershot DSC-W40), and an Mp3 Player (Astone). All the items above, plus the phone earlier described, have appeared, to my knowledge, about the same time. The phone is, well, a phone, and just a little more. It has GPRS, 256 colors, MMS, and that’s about it with the ‘outstanding’ features. All these features are ‘owned’ by the N80, so it doesn’t have anything extra. However, moving on to the camera, we see that it is by far superior to the N80’s camera. It has 6Megapixels, a maximum resolution of 2816×2112 pixels, but it can shoot at far lower resolutions, for a better space economy. The camera has a 3X optical zoom, numerous flash modes (anti red-eye, auto, fill in, off, slow flash), also, many White Balance options (auto, cloudy, daylight, fluorescent, incandescent), Mpeg4 video recording. The Mp3 player is just an ordinary mp3 player, with 1GB of memory, Radio, Voice Recording, Shuffle, and so on.

After we observed each of the options at hand, it’s time to draw a line and see which one is better. The camera is clearly better non-integrated into a phone, it has more options, better clarity, better photo handling. The mp3 player situation is, in my opinion, a draw. A small mp3 player can keep up with the phone’s options with no problems. The phone category goes to the integrated tech one, the other doesn’t have 3G capability, and this says it all.

We have to keep a few other things in mind. The phone has the advantage of having everything integrated into one small item. Doesn’t occupy a lot of space, you don’t have to worry about forgetting anything, you always have it handy. The others are, well, a drag. It’s much harder to keep all those gadgets in your pockets, and you don’t have your camera with you all the time.

The most important aspect is, obviously, the price. The Nokia N80 is rated at about 500$. The others are, as follows: $349 (The camera), about $100 (the phone) and $100 (the Mp3 player). In our case, the phone is cheaper.

I won’t say that one way is better than the other. This is purely your choice. It depends on your own preferences and possibilities. Also, I have chosen these particular examples because these are the ones that I am familiar with, so there’s no rule that, let’s say, this Sony camera is only cool along with that mp3 player or whatever. This is, as I said, purely your choice.