S60 Open to new features

I got a pocket knife today as a thank-you gift for a project I've been working on. It does 11 things: it's a straight blade knife, has a couple of cerated edged blades, two different church keys (a.k.a. bottle openers), a pair of scissors, a corkscrew, a letter opener, a Phillips-head screwdriver, and a mystery thing that I have no idea what is for. It's bigger than the pocket knife I had before. Of course it is--it does more than the old one did.

Pocket knifes are a bit like a mobile phone these days. Depending on the model, they can do a lot. How well can it do those things? It depends.

Let's take the screwdriver on this pocket knife. If I happen to be somewhere where I need a Phillips-head screwdriver, having one in my pocket is quite handy. However, if I'm at home, the form factor of the screwdriver on the pocket knife makes it much less desirable than the screwdriver in my toolbox.

A pocket knife can only have so many functions before the knife itself becomes too unwieldy to carry. Each blade takes up a certain amount of physical space and must be a minimum size to be useful, yet not to big.

Kind of reminds me of mobile phones. Given the relatively small size of a mobile phone, there's only so much room for buttons. Or display size. Or battery. Or number of megapixels that can be captured.

The overall size of the device plays a huge role in the quality of features that will be available on it. For example, the thinness of the Nokia N76 dictated you weren't going to get a huge battery or a 5mp camera. Conversely, the E90 gives you a full QWERTY keyboard and a huge screen. It's much bigger, so it can offer a much better experience. However, the E90 is much larger than the N76.

I have no doubt our R&D folks are increasing the amount of functions available on the mobile device while keeping them a reasonable size and making them as easy to use as possible. It's quite a balancing act, and unfortunately, compromises will have to be made.

My solution to the compromise is to carry two devices. This bears a size penalty. I look forward to the day when I can have it all in one device that's a reasonable size.