Possible death of calculators in education?

[pier4r]

I expect that calculators will evolve (at the end calculators or smartphones are computers, just optimized for different things) from the current interface to a smartphone interface only when the keypress precision will be good enough, and this means tacticle simulation plus space between buttons because fingers won't evolve quickly.

It is like saying that a PC dies for coding or gaming, no way one could emulate the precision of a keyboard or a mouse with touch controls (at least not yet). Or cameras. Sure smartphones replaced cheap cameras, but not even all of them.

So to the clueless student, a calculator app will be enough I guess, as many students use an overkill grahing calculator just to store compressed cheatsheets. I remember when I wrote a guide how to solve an exam with a sharp 506w and at the exam 6 people showed up with the same calc because they read my guide (and one wanted even to know how to solve the stuff, he did not even bother to read the guide).

For a "power user", that maybe will use the device outside, I guess the calculator won't be easily replaced. Have you ever tried to take a picture with a smartphone with wet fingers? With a camera it is easier because there are buttons.

The same for a calculator.

Heck I see people with a pc (of the power of a supercomputer) in from of them using those big simple calculators because it is just easier than opening the calculator app.

Instead with a properly sized tablet, I would say 8 or more inches (8 may be too small though), then a calculator app, at least on the desk, starts to be interesting.

And indeed I do remember using droid48 in 2010 with my 10 inches ZTE180 (cheap but working), was not much worse than the real 50g. I have good hopes for the HP prime application actually, but still I did not use it.

Instead with my smartphone 5.5 inches , free42 fits neatly (the best layout that I encountered so far, the other two good ones were hypercalc and handycalc, but not as neat as free42) but it shows that cramming more buttons in an already large smartphone is difficult.