I don’t want a Phablet

I don’t care how Phabulous they are, I cannot stand the name being given to the new smart devices that combine phone functionality with tablets.  Don’t get me wrong, I love technology (and gadgets), but I equally love words, and with phablet I think I’ve hit my breaking point. I really disliked “tweeting” and was not fond of the “iPad” name, for various reasons. But, yes, I caved. Now I tweet (shameless plug: tb_janine). And, now I have an iPad (although my daughter has pilfered it). But I’m going on record, I’m not going to have a phablet purely on grounds of semantics. OK, well, I might have a phablet but I’ll certainly NEVER call it that.

All of this talk of super smartphones (should we call them genius phones?) and hybrid smartphone/tablet devices has me wondering, despite my fondness for my iPhone, could the experience be improved? Web browsing can be challenging, my Kindle app is right out, and some emails are impossible to read. What about this new Samsung Galaxy Note? You know, the one that breaks the paradigm that a handset should actually fit in your hand? Well, it seems like sound thinking because Samsung has sold nearly 5million of the devices by April of this year [Ref Reuters], and I can see the appeal.

So how awesome would it be to have this ‘phablet’ functionality built into some test equipment? Where do you see the potential for some great new capabilities? I’m thinking field test should be all over it, and that’s just for a start.

Sound off below!