Managing Leadership^®

The first cell phone I used was about the size of a shoe box and weighed several pounds – basically a battery with a phone strapped on top. And, if you can imagine this, all it did was make phone calls. Things have come a ways since then, haven’t they?

After that initial experience, my route through the cell phone jungle started with Motorola, passed through Ericsson, and is now in the Nokia camp. The truth is, just being able to make phone calls was a big enough draw in a hand-held mobile telephone, and these quickly became constant companions. But they nevertheless were the sort that became superannuated quickly as new capabilities in smaller, lighter forms became available.

As time went on, these capabilities crept ever deeper into non-telephone territory. The wild expansion in seemingly every direction eventually resolved into two basic directions: telephone/entertainment device and telephone/business device – or smart phone.

My interest in the smartphone possibilities began to grow several phones ago, but none of them ever came close to approximating the range and capacity of my HP iPAQ. So, I continued to carry both devices with me, which could become a bit of an inconvenience if I wasn’t carrying a briefcase.

But no longer. Late last year I acquired a Nokia E71, which has not only bridged the capabilities of both devices, but exceeds that of the PDA in many ways – notably, but certainly not exclusively, memory capacity. I didn’t realize this at first, but I began to notice over the months that I was using the PDA less frequently, and finding robust, powerful programs for the phone that served more of the functions that I use both daily, and that are called on more rarely, but are nevertheless vital.

I took a closer look at this a short while ago, with the result that, to my utter amazement, I now walk around with just a smart phone that weighs barely more than my pen, which I also hardly use anymore. This phone is simultaneously thin, light, robustly engineered, smartly designed, brilliantly organized, powerful, flexible, and has the longest battery life and greater active and storage memory than any of its predecessors.

It does more incomparably better than anything I’ve used for these purposes before. And it’s a lot easier to carry around and use than my old paper-based planner, shoebox phone, and HP 19bII business calculator. I still have that calculator, by the way, and it is still probably the best stand-alone business calculator around.

But the phone has a business calculator in it which is more than adequate for most purposes and which also, of course, does much more.  And that’s just touching on an entirely different, and surprisingly expansive, subject, which we’ll return to on Monday.

We’ll finish the gadget tour then. In the meanwhile, have a great weekend!

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Today’s tip: I go through all of these stages that Steve Roesler reviews each time I change devices. It’s exhausting.

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Technorati Tags: cell phone, Motorola, Ericsson, Nokia, mobile, telephone, smart phone, HP, iPAQ, briefcase, Nokia E71, PDA, powerful, flexible, planner, HP 19bII, business, Steve Roesler