When the Swiss Army Knife Comes out on Top

Mark Mulligan | March 04, 2008, 03:47 AM

I was in Sicily over the weekend and went on a long run over the hills. Usually I’d take my iPod but as I was going in a direction I’d not been before I decided to take my N95 just in case I needed to make a call. The 8 gig of memory means that I’ve got a decent selection of music on there as well, though I hadn’t got round to putting the album I’d wanted to listen to on their (the Wombats). But when I was out I really began to appreciate having the N95: I saw a falcon soaring in the sky and was able to capture it on video and then when I’d got to the top of a particularly high hill I was able to take a high quality photo of the fantastic vista down to the sea. So my mild irritation of not having the music I wanted was completely offset by having all the extra functionality.

OK it’s a pretty niche usage scenario but it does illustrate how context can lessen the importance of the primary music playback functionality (the N95 doesn’t come close even to the Touch as a music player) when the secondary applications are required. Is this an argument for multimedia phones over dedicated portable media players? Not exclusively, as the latter is already fixing a course towards multi-functionality cf the iPod Touch.