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A lot of people have Palm handhelds, Blackberry devices, or one of the multitude of other mobile gadgets, but I don’t. People who are in the business of staying organized and being efficient (two things I love and strive for) preach the necessity of such mobile assistants, yet I strongly resist the trend. Why?

I’ve tried the whole mobile device thing a couple of times. As a freshman computer science student at UCSD during 2001-2002, I received a free HP Jornada. After the intial novelty wore off, I realized that it wasn’t very useful for actually doing anything with. I had another encounter in 2004 with a Sony UX-50. Although it addressed one of my larger complaints about the Jornada (no QWERTY keyboard), it still left me unimpressed and no more organized, so I sold it.

Now I’m going to try to list the reasons why I don’t have and don’t want a mobile device (or, to the same end, what a mobile device I would use needs to have):

• Long Battery Life - quite possible the highest priority feature on my list–the device has to at least be able to last an entire day with me (7am-10pm) without dying. This absolutely must include use of all of its features (WiFi, Bluetooth, IR, back light, etc.).
• Tough - I need something that can withstand a beating. I have to be able to take it out of my backpack and drop it down a flight of concrete stairs without doing any noticeable damage to it.
• Small - as with all of my other tiny electronics, the mobile device has to be small enough to easily fit into one of my pockets without causing discomfort or inconvenience.
• Fast - some PDAs and such do achieve this goal, but it should go without saying that the UI has to be snappy. I want instantaneous access to the things I need, not 2-second-per-request access.
• Easy Interface - the Jornada lacked a QWERTY keyboard and the Sony’s keyboard was small and awkward with grooves through it, making it painstakingly difficult to type the simplest text accurately and quickly. A proper QWERTY keyboard that I don’t have to carry around as a separate accessory and that is easy to use would be great. A voice interface (that works) would be fantastic. Seamless and complete management with a computer via docking station should also be a no-brainer.
• Better Browsing - probably a bit early, but I need something that can actually obtain useful information off of the web. This most likely falls in the zone of WML, etc., but the point is that things aren’t good enough now.

Those are the major gripes I have with the current set of available mobile devices, but I have plenty of smaller peeves as well. Obviously I know I’m being too demanding–otherwise I’d be shopping and not complaining. This seems to boil down (again) to people just not doing things The Right Way™.