By Staff Writer – John Federico (@gadgetboy)

There was a time when gadgets did one thing and one thing well – maybe two – and people were happy with that. Over the past few years, expectations on what an electronic device can do have skyrocketed and I believe the iPhone is to blame.

When the Amazon Kindle was released, it was a groundbreaking device. It delivered a reading experience that was extremely book-like with the bonus of a built-in wireless book store. Amazon made the mistake of adding an experimental web browser to the device along with access to wikipedia and group of other online services.

I say mistake because that browser incited geeks and technophiles everywhere to start complaining about the page rendering, the speed and the fact that the iPhone browser was so much better. Many bloggers and even digital media industry insiders decried that the connectivity was poor and really meant it was “only” good for reading your ebooks.

My response to this was twofold. First, it’s an eBook Reader, people! That’s what it was designed to do – not make phone calls, browse the web or make julienne fries. Second, who wants to read eBooks or other long form content on an iPhone? The screen just isn’t optimized for that type of experience. (Nerd Disclosure: I’ve since read some significant portions of some books on my iPhone so that my wife could use my Kindle. It wasn’t terrible, but I still prefer my eReader.)

And the chatter continues: “The Apple iTablet (if it’s ever released) will kill the Kindle and all other eBook readers!” “Netbooks will kill the Kindle!” “The [insert gadget with a screen here] will do everything!”

Today, I saw this post on Gizmodo about the possibility of eBook Readers having gaming capabilities.

Why? Is there a significant subset of the gaming community that loves books or avid readers who love games?

Just because a device can do something, doesn’t necessarily mean it should.

I’m happpy with a certain amount of convergence when convergence make sense, but to integrate features and functions just because you can doesn’t always make market sense.

Damn you, iPhone.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0