When is a phone not a phone?

Reading accountingweb today, there is a rant about blackberry's - basically documenting all the tax issues with classifying a pda as "telephone apparatus" and the challenges for employers as they try to classify the devices given to their employees.

I think this is symptomatic of a wider unification, the collision of the worlds of computers, software and telephony that is coming.  It is not just that my deskphone is stupid but also that my smartphone is blimmin clever.

I have just been upgraded from my C500 which has seen the wars to the truly wonderful HTC S620 (see left).  Although the buttons seem at first to have been designed for a japanese little girls fingers, they are quite clever and seem to respond to the right key even if I feel my fat finger is pressing about 9 of the them.  The phone is thin and very light.  It fits in your jeans pocket when you go down the pub (that is my size test for a gadget) or in a shirt top pocket.

This is the first time I've had a phone that connects happily over wireless LANs which makes it super fast for browsing site in most of the places I spend time.  The screen is that bit larger than the C500 and a much higher resolution which makes it possible to read web sites, email and with the qwerty keyboard, actually write pretty detailed mails.  I'm finding I'm responding to mail often on the phone now whereas before I only really read email on it (and that was painful).

One mild annoyance was that the mini-SD card I had is now no use because they've decided to opt for micro-SDs in this device.  However for £33 I bought a 2 Gb micro-SD which stores a serious amount of music.  The headphones that come with the phone are good quality and it lasts for about 8 hours playing music so its now an entirely viable portable music device. 

The camera is also really good which will be great for the blog.. expect to see more photos here.