One Device to Rule them All

In a previous post, I mused on letting me move video and watch it on any device I might own.

In this post, I want to conjecture on having one device that I carry with me at all times.  Ideally this device would have:

• A phone
• Access to mail and calendar (if I so choose) from AOL, GMail/Google, and Outlook (yes, I use all three, don’t ask, you don’t have time for the story).
• Music/mp3 capabilities.
• Audible.com support (for my DRM audiobook collection from them – grr).
• A game or two.
• Various and sundry other applications that will emerge and tickle my fancy.

Right now to get all this done well, I have to carry both my phone (Blackberry Storm) and an iPod Classic 80.

The Blackberry was getting close to this capability with the Blackberry Audible application, but alas it seems this has gone bonkers with the release of OS 5.  I was trying to use it today and frustration was the key feature.  The audio kept dropping off no matter if I stored the book locally or streamed it from Audible.  It was maddening because there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to it.  To restart the audio, I had to stop the playback then start it again.  If I did it right away, it would pick up where it dropped off, but if I was doing something nonessential, like driving, and had to wait for the work-around, then I missed the portion that was read during the worthless driving activity.

You might say that the iPhone does all this.  Yes, it appears to, but I haven’t seen the mail & calendar integration that I would need, and I just hate being trapped in the Apple-only ecosystem.  Today it all works with Audible, but if Apple decides that its best interests are to kill the Audible cooperation, it won’t hesitate to do so (as would any self-respecting capitalist institution).  I applaud this approach, for I believe in our system, but I just don’t want to get trapped by it.  I could continue to do what I do right now by buying only DRM free music, but I like the Verizon network I have and have been hearing bad stories about AT&T.

Windows Mobile might be the answer, but I got burned pretty badly by their upgrades not supporting whatever recent purchase I had made, and the fact that Windows CE-then PocketPC-then Mobile seems to have a hard time deciding what it wants to be, so for now I stay away.

I’m hoping that maybe the Verizon (my current phone carrier) and its new embrace of Google’s Android might be the answer.  The Navigation application looks like a real winner no matter what.  I’ve seen the demos of the mail/calendar integration, but the kicker is whether or not Audible is going to support the OS with player.  It took them a while with Zune, so I’m hoping for Android.  Of course by the time I wait, and am rewarded, some new version or new application will be out there that I want to have, and it won’t be supported by whatever current device I carry.

I don’t mind upgrading the hardware every few years or so, but balk at being locked in to a DRM situation that won’t be supported in a future release or new devices.  (Yes, I know I’m locked into Audible, but I was young, and needed to save the money, etc.)