Today they are called cell phones, and they are becoming more powerful each and every day. Carriers like AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint, Nextel, Alltel, and more are continuously feeding the frenzy of gadget hungry subscribers. The ability of chip companies to make them smaller and yet more powerful, is the new race in the technical fields. Battery life has dramatically increased over the last couple of year, with longer talk and standby times. In our lifetimes we may see such innovations as minature fuel cell batteries, intuitive systems that will completely operate by voice and touch commands, screen projection abilities and many other things we haven't yet thought about. The screen resolutions are increasing with each model, as well as the sizes and the amount of them on each device. You almost can't call them cell phones anymore. The phone part is rapidly becoming a secondary function. Emailing, text messaging, web surfing, picture and video options are driving the purchases today.

Add-on flash memory modules, such as SD, miniSD and microSD are holding more data then ever before. 2GB and 4GB are commonplace now, with 8GB now on the marketplace, and 16GB sizes are not far behind. Windows Mobile is on more and more devices, with other OS's from Blackberry, Sun, Linux, and Palm right there building more powerful systems. The Apple iPhone is rapidly taking a share of the marketplace, and even Google is talking about it's own phone. The PDA's that were once larger than your hand are shrinking in overall size, while increasing in their power and abilities.

I believe within ten years, what we call cell phones and laptops today, will merge to one device and be able to fit in the palm of your hand.