Five gadgets under threat of extinction

This great photograph has just landed in the Shiny mailbox – a tricky photo to take, requiring a top-end camera, surely? Apparently not. This picture was taken using a mobile phone, specifically the Nokia N8. The photographer is Jason Hawkes, a professional aerial photographer who has created an image series for the Nokia HD Horizons project. “By its very nature, aerial photography is very difficult to do, so we’re pushing the limits of this camera as far as we can go,” said Hawkes about the 12-megapixel phone camera. But it’s fair to say phone cameras have come a very long way – begging the question: does this spell the beginning of the end for compact cameras?

Technological convergence – such as putting a camera on a phone – could see other familiar devices become redundant as well. We make some suggestions below for items that could go the way of the Betamax:

– Compact cameras
If the Nokia experiment is anything to go by, compact cameras are marked for death. Not to mention the hassle of transferring photos from them – shouldn’t they have web capability by now, so we could just move pictures directly onto the internet?

– Sat-nav devices
Google Maps does this for free now – there goes the market. For the moment the likes of TomTom can still differentiate themselves by adding ‘clever’ navigation that avoids tiny roads and traffic traps, needed by professional drivers. But Google is probably working on that.

– UBS sticks
Fiddly little things, always breaking apart in you bag too. It’s all cloud now – the big USB stick in the sky – and we like it.

– Video cameras
Again a market where a mobile phone will probably be enough for most of us: the amateurs and holidaymakers. Battery life may be an issue for any significant amount of filming, but that will change in time. In the future, top-notch batteries may threaten the music player market too, as your mobile will have enough juice to keep the tunes coming all day without running out.

– Chargers
Forget the universal mobile charger (by the way, what’s taking so long on that? Heel-draggers.). It’s going to be wireless charging in the future. LG has already started working on a charging pad, where you put your device on top of it for charging, not to mention Powermats and Duracell’s myGrid. How efficient.