The Role of the Graphing Calculator in 2021 and Beyond

[Vtile]

Do not underestimate the importance of the life span of the calculator vs. some app. The first one might serve 20..40 years of use, the latter might survive 5 years before dying out of market or get so much development that it is not the same calculator anymore.

Also there should be considerable evolution of size reduction for calculators, these things are not a pocket calculators at all, while it could be possible to do. The color display etc. are nice but not necessary. Look at DM42 hardware, with a bit keyboard redesign and LiPo it could serve as HP50g, with form factor of pocket calculator. Did I mention the battery life span, the important thing is that you can forget the calculator for 6 months and then use it without first charging it. Also the graphing feature is nice addition, ie. nice to have when some odd ie. sizing things are involved. It is handy to see visually see where the slopes of the function are to approximate the best fit operation point of some device. Not to mention the possibility to use full screen menus and instructional graphics for eg. equation libraries.

Also the "peer review" of calculators is hugely important, that is the wide and professional enough user-base to find out the bugs and poor mathematical errors.

There is also companies that are so let say cheap that you will not have company access to any form of mathematical tool above Excel. Been there done that.