Tablet-ma-phones. The next big thing or a flash back to the 80s?

Recently at Macadamian we've been doing a ton of mobile work. Specifically Android development. One of the really interesting things we've gotten to see is a huge slew of devices coming in the door. More recently, at the 2011 CES there was a slew of Android tablets (most of them horrible) and phones, so I'm sure this year we will see even more strange permutations of mobile devices.

However, after experiencing a few of these devices I feel that the size and scale of mobile phones these days has trended back towards this:

Image: Motorola 8500x

But I find myself missing a term for these phones and tablets, so I'm going to invent one... "tablet-ma-phones". These tablet-ma-phones are big phones and medium size tablets (5-7"). And what I've noticed is that many of tablet-ma-phones are... well... ridiculously big to be a phone, just look at this photo of the dell streak:

Image: Dell Streak tablet-ma-phone modeled by fellow Macadamian Faraz - who is well over 6' tall

This is where I think the iPad had it right. Imagine if they tried to make the iPad similar into one of these tablet-ma-phones? Seriously, why do you want a medium sized tablet-ma-phones that feels like an old 80s mobile phone that won't fit in any of your pockets except your laptop bag! It's not a phone, and really, it's not a very good tablet.

In the few occasions that I've found myself using my iPad as a soft phone, let me tell you, walking down the street yelling into the top of an iPad gets you plenty of stares... but seriously would you want to walk around looking like this:

Image: Apple iPad, sported like a tablet-ma-phone - seriously who would want to try and talk on it?

I don't think so.

So c'mon world lets keep our cell phones in our pockets and our tablets in our bags... and lets throw away these tablet-ma-phones.