When it comes to the number of features being crammed into every device imaginable, where do we draw the line?

There's certainly been a whole lot of "convergence" going on in the world of consumer electronics.

Your cell phone can now act as your camera, which is great if you like postage-stamp-sized, blurry pictures of some hottie you saw over the weekend (you pervert).

Also, have fun trying to figure out how to do anything useful with that picture, like e-mailing it or transferring it to your computer. Cell phones aren't really designed for that sort of thing.

Here's another thing that probably shouldn't be viewed on your phone: video. The newest phones let you download entertainment, sports, news and weather video clips.

I may be getting a little stodgy in my old age, but I really don't think that's necessary.

I'm a big believer in the idea that products should have a specific purpose and serve that purpose well. I don't use my iPod as an address book or calendar, even though it has those functions built in.

It wasn't really designed to do those things, and as a result, the features suffer. Not having any way to put contacts into the iPod, for example, is a critical oversight.

I'm trying to figure out what's causing this "feature creep."

Is it that consumers are demanding it, or that companies are forcing it on us? Are we users so concerned with keeping our pockets light that we're willing to sacrifice quality, or were we never even given a seat at the table?

At this point I'm leaning toward the latter, because I rarely see people using all the features available to them, but I could certainly be wrong.

Cell phones are supposed to be mobile voice communication tools, and on that front some significant improvements have been made in the past several years.

Voice dialing, Bluetooth (wireless) hands-free units and vibrating call and message alerts make phones more fun and enjoyable to use.

I think handset manufacturers have gotten a little too excited, though, and have overcomplicated our lives in the process.

We have PlayStations because they're designed for playing games, watches because they're great for finding out what time it is (a watch is the only accessory I wear, and I'm saddened to see so many people forgoing them and using only their phone as a timepiece) and TV sets because they're great for watching -- you guessed it -- television.

Specialization begets excellence. Anybody who has tried to use their PlayStation as a DVD player knows exactly what I'm talking about (hint: The user experience sucks).

There's no denying that some new phone features are just plain cool. GPS-guided navigation, for example, is something that I'm seriously looking at for my next phone.

And I think that Internet access from anywhere is a nice luxury to have.

Again, though, the problem is that phones really don't deliver these functions in a great way. In the rare cases where things do work well, the interface is so complicated that a great many people can't use them. What's worse, a lot of people don't even know that their devices have these features.

The way I see it, there are two ways to solve this problem. We could change the term "cell phone" to something a little more accurate, like "mobile catch-all device" (I'm not very creative, obviously).

Or we could come to the understanding that maybe it's OK to carry both a phone and an MP3 player, despite their massive weights.