The advent and consequent dominance of the smartphone has resulted in the—in many cases, early—demise of many devices. Many others are on their way to an early grave. But can their very nemesis also result in the resurrection in some of these devices? I am not convinced, but recent interactions with two top tech company honchos has got me thinking.
In the first interaction, Logitech vice-president and managing director (ASEAN & India region) Moninder Jain was of the opinion that while smartphones and tablets might have introduced millions of people to the connected world, those very people will now want more out of their devices and look for more productive devices. “All those who have not experienced a laptop or a desktop will soon start understanding the limitations of a smartphone,” he said. This is why Logitech, which still gets most of its numbers from catering to the demands of the traditional PC industry in economies like India, is bullish about the prospects of the old-fashioned computer in the so-called post-PC era.
Jain certainly has a point. Despite all advancements, there are not many smartphones that can be very productive for the average user, provided you don’t call a 100 tweets a day or the odd quick reply to an office-mail productivity. How many smartphones let you open and edit an Excel sheet with daily sales data for a couple of quarters? Yes, you will slowly look for the office laptop to start the work, despite your flashy new Android. No large a price tag can give you this convenience, that is the curse of this form-factor at the moment. Of course, you can project the spreadsheet from the smartphone to a monitor or PC and use a keyboard to do the work, but that is not we mean by on-the-go productivity, is it?
There are attempts like the Asus Padfone which is essentially a smartphone powering a larger screen so that you can work on it when needed. But this is as good as carrying two devices on you. It is not that the tablet is any better. Whatever companies might want to say about their larger screens not a lot of people are all that confident about using a tablet, especially an Android one, for quality work. Yes, there is a possibility that those who need to do more will end up acquiring a proper computer sooner or later.
The other suggestion came from Kazutada Kobayashi, President & CEO, Canon India. He thinks smartphones—which are, in a way, trouncing the long tail of the camera industry—could actually be the best thing to have happened to high-end cameras. “More people are now exposed to the joys of photography. If even 20% of these people go to the next level, that would be a great demand for high-end cameras,” he said. He sure has a point. Has there ever been a point in time when so many people were clicking photographs.
So, while smartphone cameras might be getting better and better by the day, there is no way they can replace a top-end camera. Even when they get as good as the DSLR, they will continue to have smaller sensors which will limit their use on the professional front to a certain extent. As Kobayashi says, there is no way you can take a backlit photograph with a phone camera. And as I have discovered over the years, clicking a macro-photo is also pretty tough.
There have been some great camera phones over the years. The Nokia 808 Pureview and more recently the HTC One M8 or the Samsung Galaxy Note 4. But they all have their limitations. Compare that with a DSLR. Even the most affordable DSLRs don’t say ‘quit’ if the person holding it has a sense of what needs to be done.
Yes, the mobile phone, followed by the smartphone, has to be the biggest innovation of our times. When it comes to changing people’s lives, nothing has really achieved the scale these small wonders have been able to. But that does not mean they will be the only computing or imaging device we will need. That is pretty much science fiction at the moment.
nandagopal.rajan@expressindia.com