Long distance calls can be made using an iPhone via Facetime calls. I txted somebody in Australia using iMessage. Cool stuff. Used to have to pay tons of money to do all this…

@ Shrutarshi Basu:

Yes, I agree. But the fact is, I do know people who watch Netflix almost elusively on their tablet sized phone so I figured it was a valid use case. And while phone does not make for a great boombox on its own, there are very inexpensive speaker sets you can buy that will provide just the right amplification. Nearly all barbecues I went to this summer had “phone driven” music playing in the background. :)

As for smart gloves – I don’t know if I like the idea. Conceptually it would work, but they would be annoying and cumbersome. Rings or bands could be a viable replacement that is less ostentatious and could more easily be turned into a status symbol / fashion accessory. Alternatively your smart glasses could have downward pointing camera that would track movements of your hands…

Interesting table of convergences. I would like to point out that for some things the phone is a capable, but inferior device. I’d much rather watch movies on my larger TV screen or even a laptop screen than on a tiny phone, and I don’t think a phone’s speakers quite do duty as a boombox (unless you’re in a fairly small, closed space). But I agree with the broader point.

Once smart glasses become more common, I would love to see better input devices. The swipe keyboard on my phone is nice, but some kind of glove with positional sensors that can accurately track finger movements? I’d love to be sitting outside in the sun with my smart glasses and gloves getting serious work done.

I’d also like to be able to more easily write software that easily connects my phone and the “cloud” services I use on a regular basis, but that’s a matter for another post.