The potential for iphone games is there but Apple would need to drop in an AM/FM tuner and they will replace all my handheld devices.

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I prefer to have separate devices. I have a cell phone which can... call and SMS (no camera or MP3 'cuz it's cheap and I don't need such features). An mp3 player which can err... play music. And of course a ds for game. When I want to listen to music, play games, surf internet, IM , watch videos, compile code at the same time. I go home and use my PC. No handheld device I know can beat its processor's power.

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Plus, playing games especially those with fancy graphic effects will eat up the phone's battery really fast. No one can call you then. That's why I feel the idea of "a mobile phone for games" is just wrong.

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I hate phones too much to want to spend a lot of time playing games on them. How horrible would it be to be in the middle of a boss fight when you get a call you have to take?

Also: Nokia N-Gage. That should speak for itself.

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Of course, no one is mentioning that the "app store" is fully functional for the iPod Touch, also.... not just the iPhone. I don't know if any of you have one, but I can tell you that it's the funnest piece of tech that I've ever had. I love it. 32gb is QUITE a bit of storage (for a flash memory-based player), and its thinner than the iPhone..... just elegant and beautiful. The processor is muscular, too. Think about it; with the right development teams on board, a LOT of possibilities exist here where they simply do not for current generation handheld game systems. How about a 2-3gb install? MASSIVE titles are possible, w/o info having to stream off of some klunky UMD. I see no reason why we cannot have Morrowind-style epics on this thing. To come off the grill, saying it will fail is short-sighted, to say the very least. Remember how many nay-sayers called the DS a gimmick, too weak to contend w/ the PSP? How the touch-screen was a mere fascination, and that it would wear thin quickly? That's a WHOLE lot of egg to have to wipe off later, perhaps.

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I have a big bag I always carry around so there's always room for some more devices. The only thing I worry about is that if my bag gets stolen, the thief is very lucky (phone, camera, ds and/or psp, ipod touch) and I will be very broke :(

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PSP already fills those shoes for me. I mean, it's a multimedia device, and I really doubt the iPhone will do better than the PSP at gaming, so it's not going to reach the DS. I think it's just another obsessed Mac-Guy whose convinced all Mac stuff will win the world over, well, they've been saying that for years, doesn't mean it's gonna happen.

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I dont actually carry my DS very much only on long trips, i dont always take m ipod out with me, My phone, it has some music, video, camera, games etc to get me by if i even need it, but i dont see it as a replacement for my ipod, camera, camcorder, DS etc. The closest thing phones have come to is cameras but even then stand alone cameras are always leaping ahead to make up for it.

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Perhaps I am a freak of nature but I happen to use my DS + homebrew daily. As some of you audiophiles pointed out it does not have nearly the sound quality of the psp or the ipod natively. But paired with a good pair of headphones it can skip by on trips less you are traveling in very noisey areas.

Honestly, having both a ds and a psp with my previous experience with an ipod I just can not get over the battery life of a ds as a mp3 player. A good app that continues to play music with it closed can damn near go non-stop for almost a week ( I have left it on by mistake for that period of time playing mp3s ). The only downfall is naturally when its open with screens blaring you wont nearly get that amount of battery life.

As for my psp on the road I honestly only use it to play videos. Yes I brewed up some DS videos but it really isn't the same as the psp and honestly feels like a parlor trick. Plus videos on my psp can still be played back on my small laptop in a window if I feel inclined during work while the DS seems to have video format wars on which type of custom video file you wish to use that are uncompatiable with everything but the DS and that particular program.

While gaming on the road with my psp I honestly haven't felt inclined. I mean lets face it, DS sleep mode just rocks. Close it to take care of something and reopen back where you left off at anytime while the Psp regardless seems more cumbersome, has load times, and very little developer support for games you can step away from and come back easily without at best restarting a level.

Yeah you can pause it, but pause or game play will still drain your life. Even if the display does go to sleep it still has to reload everything again off disk etc which takes juice. So needless to say on the road my psp simply serves as a nice video player that does resume where I leave off where I wish most the games would.

As for adding phone abilities...scratch that. I would rather have a nice phone that doubles as its own wireless hotspot so that my psp and ds could net through it like a modem just as some cells allow laptops to perform through bluetooth.

Bout the best I have found is having my laptop tapped into a cell through blue tooth and using its own wifi as a access point to any other device I am carrying. It works flawlessly on a mac, but kinda rules out carrying less bulk and being forced to have a laptop open in public places.

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