Sony PSP and the death of the PDA

Sony PSP is a great little machine that I have lots of fun with. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the PSP doesn't have any PDA like functionality. No calendar, no phonebook, no To Do lists, not even an alarm clock. Not that important, but it would have made the little handheld even more useful.

Recently I realized that it is not important at all, in fact, leaving the PDA functionality out of the PSP is a great idea. The machine already has wi-fi, and after the 2.0 firmware upgrade the PSP has a built-in browser with full Javascript support. QWERTY keyboard add-ons are already announced.

With wireless hot-spots all over the place, and growing with leaps and bounds, I can imagine using the PSP to access my calendar, phonebook, To Do lists, e-mail and newsfeed over the internet. Why lock the information into a specific handheld hardware, and into a properiety fileformat (and fiddle with synchronization problems) when I can access the same information on my PSP, cellphone or computer? And if all these devices break down I can go to the nearest Internet Café or use the business service at the hotel.

I predict that the age of the PDA is soon coming to an end, instead we will keep our information on the Internet. I also predict that we will in the near time see more services on the web that offers PSP formatted webpages. And finally, I am pretty sure that Google already has it all figured out, Gmail is only a small beginning...