What exactly is a smartphone, and what exactly is a PDA? As innovations allow handhelds to add more functions to their feature sets, the difference between the two gadgets becomes less clear. This has complicated efforts for reaching commonly accepted definitions

A brave soul at Wikipedia contends that smartphones are first and foremost, phones. They may either have simple PDA programs, or have capabilities which put Desktop Computers to shame, but it's still about the calls. Many PDAs on the other hand feature telephony functions, but concentrate more on data manipulation.

But what if even this distinction isn't obvious? The Treo is very popular because of the apparent simplicity in how it switches between voice and data tasks. Is the Treo neither a smartphone nor PDA, since it seems not to focus on anything?

Our impression of what a gadget concentrates on depends on our impressions. Our idea of what a mobile phone (numeric keypad and telephony) or a PDA (runs programs, facilitates text input) is has hardly changed since they were both invented. What if manufacturers integrate phone and PDA functions in a way that it becomes hard to tell where the focus is? What if we change our ideas of what a phone and PDA is all about?

Maybe then the death of the PDA, as predicted by many pundits, is simply about meanings. Possibly, when the holy grail of handhelds comes out, a gadget that does everything so well that we can't call it a smartphone, PDA, PDA phone, camera, music player, ultra mobile PC, or kitchen sink, the only problem may be what to call this new hybrid. "The Smart PDA" perhaps? ;-)