&gt; Everyone is used to having one of these things that they carry around in their pocket, and scarcely anyone really needs any other general-purpose computing device.<p>Unless they want to read something, or type more than a paragraph, or do anything collaborative. Because it still feels a niche role, not a general computing one, the ability to connect to service providers is the dominating characteristic.<p>If anything, I see &quot;phone&quot; moving to be a description of service, and devices are just named device-specific things. People have already started dropping the &quot;smart&quot; part and just assume that a &quot;phone&quot; at LEAST can call. I now distinguish between &quot;phones&quot;, &quot;flip phones&quot;, and &quot;land lines&quot;. If I don&#x27;t need to talk, why not just get an ipod and a laptop? Each device is much better when giving up the domain of the other.