The question of netbook or smartphone is on many people’s minds at the moment, and it is interesting, if not amusing, to watch as smartphones get bigger and netbooks get smaller. Soon they will be one and the same, and then what name shall be given to them? Smartbook or Netphone? What’s your money on?

The likely answer is neither of them will meet the needs of the other fully, and that these choice factors will best be met by what might be the ultimate amalgamation of the netbook and smartphone, whatever that might be.

In making your mind up between them, the smartphone has a normal cell battery that can keep it on standby for a number of days. The netbook is more like a computer, with battery life of under 4 hours, so it would have to be kept switched off. Trying booting up your computer just to answer a phone call and you have a major important difference between the two.

However, for use as a computer, the full keyboard it offers enables you to write text quickly and so write letters and reports and then email them just as with a full-sized computer. The same is true if you have to use spreadsheets – the smartphone is next to useless for regular business office use, even though you have the facility. If you write a lot of reports, letters and use spreadsheets and even if you browse frequently, give the smartphone a rain check. Get yourself a cheap cell for your calls.

Quite frankly, the netbook or smartphone decision boils down to this. If your phone is predominantly used as just that, and you also use the internet occasionally and a few of the other apps, then go for the smartphone. If you do a lot of browsing or writing letters and notes, or perhaps you have to use spreadsheets and databases on the go, then choose the netbook with a cheap cell phone for your calls.

If you don’t go that way, then you will not get the best use out of either. It is far better to have two devices that meet your needs exactly than one that is a compromise and offers you only partial functionality for your total needs. If you already have a smartphone, then get a netbook as well, and you can always sell or change your smartphone for a less expensive alternate cell phone. If you have a notebook, then forget the smartphone – all you need is the same inexpensive PAYG that you can top up when needed.

It should not be too long before current technology in roll-out screens and keypads, as are available in some e-readers, will extend to smartphones, and then the netbook will become redundant and obsolete. However, that day is not yet here and when it happens will likely depend upon the perceived future of the netbook by their makers. It is likely that one or the other will disappear in the form of an amalgamate device with the speed of a smartphone and the mobile office functionality of a netbook.

The technology is currently available to combine the two – e-reader technology has come up with the roll-out screen that can be applied to keypads – but it has not yet been decided to combine them into a comprehensive all-encompassing netbook/smartphone. Until that day comes you have the choice to make: netbook or smartphone – which is for you?

Author Robert Mann is a published writer and technology manager residing in California. Among his many Internet projects are sites for finding the correct laptop batteries and cell phone batteries for specified products.. This article, Netbook or Smartphone? is available for free reprint.