RealCalc by Quartic Software UK

[MarkHaysHarris777]

Greetings,

I have been contemplating the inevitable demise of the dedicated hand-held calculator, particularly the beloved HP RPN non graphing variety. (My experience with the hand-held calcs goes back to the original HP35 and the original HP45 gold-key units which followed. I also own several Sharps and all of the TI advanced calcs. My most recent purchases for the collection are the FX115es Plus, TI 36x Pro, and the HP35s programable). Needless to say I'm a maths geek, a tech nerd... and I'm also a software engineer. I studied electrical engineering back in the 70's, and I'm an amateur radio operator W0MHH. May I say, I love my calculator collection and the idea of the dedicated hand-held units. Having said that, I am convinced that the age of the hand-held calculator (as such) is coming to an end... much like the slide rule before it (my slide rule is a Picket Dual-Base LogLog; my high school class '74 was the last class to teach the slide rule, and I used mine only briefly in college). sorry, I digressed there a bit...

The RPN calculator I carry with me and use on a daily basis is NOT a dedicated hand-held calc from my collection. I have been using an RPN calculator which may be configured to look and feel like an HP clone ( I have my x,y,z,t stack configured to show three lines, without buffer ), is a fully functional scientific calculator, and runs on my Android Samsung phone-- RealCalc from Quartic Software, UK.

It is my opinion that this new paradigm is the wave of the future in hand-held calculation. The calculator has been upgraded routinely (UI and firmware) and yet for me it was just a 1.5 minute software upgrade (no new purchase, no new hardware, no living with firmware glitches, etc). It has occurred to me that the HP paradigm (for which the new HP35s was released to celebrate) might be on the way out the door with the advent of the ARM processor and the smart phone. I just don't think HP can afford to compete any longer with cheaper education student models and certainly not with the smart phone software models.

See RealCalc here:

http://www.quartic-software.co.uk/screenshots.php

(if you configure the stack for HP style x,y,z,t then the 'Drop' key on these screen shots revert to the standard R arrow roll key)

I am wondering about a couple of things. What do you folks think about my thesis? Are any of you using smart phone RPN scientific calculator emulations rather than your dedicated hand-held? Do any of you foresee HP releasing another non graphing RPN calculator? Seems to me that the HP35s may be the last animal of its kind.

PS. For those of you who really loved the 15C, RealCalc running on the Android phone held sideways is pretty much an HP15C--- check it out.