After carefull consideration I realized that I need a PDA for work. A device where I can access Google Calendar, check my mail regularly (but not permantly)… and I also need a camera.
So I need and I-touch with a camera.
I don’t need or want and I-phone. Its to expensive and I already have a cellphone.
So the question is are there alternatives in the market to the I-touch? This device should have android, a camera and a touchscreen.
This is an example but, sadly, it doesn’t appear to be in the market yet.
I have no definitive answer for you, but I don’t think you are going to find what you are looking for. I assume by I-touch you actually mean iPod Touch, which is not really a PDA but an MP3 player with some cool features. Unfortunately there has been a movement away from PDAs and towards “smart phones” in the last several years. The problem with this is that smart phones tend to lack the in depth data organization features of a true PDA.
I just did a search of HP’s PDA line-up and it consists of the same two PDAs they had two years ago when I bought one from them, neither has a camera. The feature set you are looking for just doesn’t exist outside the phone market as far as I can tell. Depending on the level of features you are expecting from a PDA you may or may not get everything you are looking for from a smart phone, but you just aren’t going to get it anywhere else.
P.S. I just looked at the article you linked to, and I guess I should amend the above to say that in the near future tablets will provide the same features that PDAs used to, but not yet.
I too have wondered why Android phone makers don’t just remove the phone aspect of their devices and produce an “iPod Touch killer”, because the Touch has been a great success. Maybe just a matter of time, or maybe the economics of it somehow work for Apple but not for them.
Dunno - but maybe it’s something to do with the angle of approach - Android is an OS that was developed explicitly for running a phone, and happens to be versatile enough to do lots of other interesting stuff, the IPhone OS seems to have targeted the phone and entertainment functions all at once, from the start.
This article is out of date, but I think it illustrates why its not so easy to kill the iPod, touch or no. Apple holds over 70% market share, that’s a lot of inertia to overcome. I am pretty sure companies have advertised “iPod killers” before and uniformly been forced to eat there words.
An iPod Touch with a camera is probably the next update to the device. It was widely rumored to have been in the release last fall (when the Nano got a camera) and is now expected in the first half of this year.
Sounds like you need a new phone. The needs you specify (Android, camera, touchscreen), are all only met with a recent-generation cell. HTC makes good Android touch-screen phones, some with 5MP cameras, and they should all be available unlocked. They’re expensive, though.
Yup, the best and cheapest option will be looking into a phone upgrade through your wireless carrier. Why do you need Android? You can use Google Calendar and Gmail on pretty much any phone with a browser and/or app catalog. Palm Pre and iPhone OS included.
OK, but the iPod touch is a very different beast to other iPods. It’s more closely related to the iPhone, an “iPhone with training wheels”, as Steve Jobs puts it. When you play with an Android phone, it is obvious that the platform could be used to make something very like an iPod touch. I’m not saying it would be quite as good, but they could compete on price/spec. Yes, Apple have the advantage of the iTunes store, but to me there is a lot more to the iPod touch than just music. I don’t even have any music on mine, yet I still use it a lot.
I consider the iTouch an ultra-portable computer. I was looking for a similar set of specs, and comparable price point and I was surprised not to find anything.
I wonder if other phone makers can’t (or don’t) make a phone-less version of their devices because there’s no phone contract to subsidize it.
Could be a good candidate for an iPad.
There are a lot of used Android phones available on ebay for less than $200. Why not buy one of those and not use the phone part? Some of them have wi-fi, so you wouldn’t need internet service from the phone company. You might even find one compatible with your phone company, so you don’t to carry two devices.
My husband recently got an HTC Droid Eris - he absolutely loves it, and I can say from my personal experience of taking pictures of him trying not to fall out of a tree this past weekend, it does have a camera.
The downside of the Eris is, of course, that it IS a phone. But, like others have said, it has wi-fi capabilities, so if you can buy one outside of the system, you can probably use it much like a PDA.