As someone who had a few pre-smartphone PDAs: Smartphones absolutely are high powered shit. On paper they're amazing but the ecosystem limits you to scrolling instagram and only a handfull of accepted IMs (iOS struggles with XMPP and IRC for example, something even my hacked DS could do fine with 4MB of ram and a 60Mhz ARM9.)
Just editing fucking textfiles and copying it back to a normal PC (that isn't a mac) is a real bitch. Especially if you don't have an internet connection. It's almost as bad as a ti84+ honestly, just a nicer screen, a couple cameras, and the ability to send IM and email. In fact the TI84 could do things iOS can't, I had compilers on mine.
EDIT: Somehow I missed that you mentioned the battery. Smartphones have some of the worst battery life among any PDA I've had. iPhones can stretch out a few days (maybe a week if it's just sitting in a drawer near a tower) if you use them sparingly but it's nothing like the Palm Pilot or the grayscale calculators that could easily last a month.
Just editing fucking textfiles and copying it back to a normal PC (that isn't a mac) is a real bitch. Especially if you don't have an internet connection. It's almost as bad as a ti84+ honestly, just a nicer screen, a couple cameras, and the ability to send IM and email. In fact the TI84 could do things iOS can't, I had compilers on mine.
EDIT: Somehow I missed that you mentioned the battery. Smartphones have some of the worst battery life among any PDA I've had. iPhones can stretch out a few days (maybe a week if it's just sitting in a drawer near a tower) if you use them sparingly but it's nothing like the Palm Pilot or the grayscale calculators that could easily last a month.