Gadgets that deserved to die

At first in my list, I have digital cameras (not DSLRs), also known as point & shoot digital cameras. A decline in sales of such cameras can be clearly seen in the current scenario & it is not because there are many smartphones available now that can click pictures that are at par in terms of quality with ones taken by a point & shoot camera but just because we, as general users don’t like to carry a lot of devices where each is limited to a specific use with ourselves.

A simple digital camera doesn’t allow us to readily share our pictures with friends or family or over social media. This can be easily done through a smartphone. Smartphone cameras are also evolving at a good rate & now have front cameras with which we can take selfies easily.

Personally, I stopped using alarm clocks a long time ago as I realized nothing can wake me up against my will. But there are some people who still make use of alarm clocks. Using an alarm clock requires you to replace its batteries from time to time with newer ones and after it wakes you up then you need to turn it off as well.

Smartphones allow us to keep track of time & set alarms in a meaningful way. One can set multiple alarms; repeat an alarm for a specified set of days, snooze it or set a customized message or tone to wake you up.

Pen drive/Flash Drive/Thumb Drive, a highly compact & portable storage device that is also often referred to as USB (short for Universal Serial Bus) which is actually the type of port a pen drive goes into became a rage when initially it was introduced in the late 2000s.

It was a much-needed breakthrough that replaced CD as the most convenient & easy to use portable storage solution.

Though in the current scenario, Pen drives are still quite relevant & are being widely used all over the world, as the technology continues to grow & the advancements in field cloud computing & storage, the requirement & demand for pen drives is likely to decrease in future.

Before USB storage devices existed, CDs were the only available piece of gadgets that could store a decent amount of data. At that time CDs were widely used to store & distribute data such as Music, Movies & Softwares.

But now, in 2018, where almost everyone has access to the Internet with decent speed CDs have become an ancient piece of tech as they cannot match up to the requirements of a current-day user that is a) a Large amount of storage & b) Lightning Fast transfer of data.

That is why now CD Drives are not present in modern laptops & notebooks.

Now, where do I even start, the next technology on my list is a type of Internet access that is as fast as a Tortoise. A Dial-Up Internet uses a public switched telephone network (PSTN) to connect to an ISP (Internet Service Provider) by dialing a telephone number on the conventional traditional telephone line.

In times, where we have so many better ways to access the Internet, there is broadband, we are currently using the 4^th generation of broadband cellular network technology commonly referred to as 4G & soon would make a switch to 5G. A recent survey shows that 3% of the population in the U.S still uses the dial-up connection. Maybe because it provides you enough time to work upon your day-to-day chores before it loads up a web page.

A PDA or a Personal Desktop Assistant, also known as Handheld PC is a mobile device that stores important information & functions as a personal information manager. They can also be considered as the first generation of modern-day Smartphones.

A modern-day smartphone is considered to be the combination of conventional PDA & Cellular Mobile Phones with more focus on cellular phone functionality.

Many of the original PDAs including the Palm Pilot & Apple Newton had only a few buttons & featured a touchscreen for interaction with users. Few PDAs had a detachable stylus to create selections.

PDAs were largely discontinued in the early 2010s after the arrival of highly capable smartphones running on Android & IOS. However, PDAs are still in use in certain industries, prominently in Warehouses for inventory Management & in courier industries.

But for the average user PDAs are now passé.

There was a time when having a landline telephone connection at your home was a big deal & was considered a privilege. To make calls, people used to rely either on local telephone booths or their neighbors.

But now in 2018, things are quite different. According to the latest forecast by eMarketer, a U.S based market research firm, by the end of 2018, more than a quarter of India’s population will be using smartphones & any user would not like to pay extra for a separate landline along with their mobile recharges. Also, The number of landline telephone connections in the country has shrunk over the last couple of years, standing at about 25.22 million in 2016 against 32.17 million in 2012.