Wireless Phone and Palm Are United in Smartphone
BY WALTER S. MOSSBERG
-I know this is a repeat but it is the article on the front page of the WSJ interactive edtion. Includes pictures.
interactive.wsj.com
Caxton
DID YOU EVER FIND yourself trying to juggle a mobile phone and a Palm hand-held computer to look up phone numbers or consult your calendar while making a series of calls? It has happened to me, and at those awkward moments, I always wonder when there will be a single device that can smoothly combine a phone and a really good personal digital assistant, or PDA.
Well, one such device hit the market this week. It's called the Kyocera Smartphone, and it's nothing less than a wireless phone with a genuine Palm PDA built right in. At first glance, it looks like a normal mobile phone. But you can flip down the hinged keypad to reveal a fully functional Palm, with all the familiar capabilities, icons and buttons.
The Kyocera QCP 6035, as it's formally known, was introduced Monday by Verizon Wireless at $499. It's the latest entry in a high-stakes battle to merge the phone and the PDA.
Some companies are trying to take the familiar rectangular PDA design and add phone capabilities to appeal to data-centric people who make a few calls. Others are trying to take the equally familiar design of the wireless phone and add PDA features, including a larger screen, to appeal to heavy phone users who want access to data. All of these combo devices, including the new Kyocera, also have wireless e-mail and Web functions.
ON THE PDA SIDE of the war, the only candidate so far has been Handspring's elegant VisorPhone, a small $299 attachment for the Palm-compatible Handspring Visor that adds phone, e-mail and Web capabilities.
Kyocera's Smartphone
On the phone side, success has been elusive. The Sprint TP3000 and the R380 from Ericsson have their virtues, but they lack the brilliant user interface and the broad compatibility of the genuine Palm design. The only previous effort to embed a real Palm PDA into a wireless phone, the Qualcomm pdQ, was a miserable failure, far too large and far too costly.
This new Smartphone from Kyocera, which took over Qualcomm's mobile-phone business, is much better. It's considerably lighter, shorter and thinner than the Qualcomm pdQ. People who insist on a very small phone won't like it, but I found it fit nicely in my hand, briefcase or jacket pocket, and was more convenient than juggling two devices. It's less than an inch thick, 2.6 inches wide and 5.6 inches long, and weighs 7.3 ounces.
You can use the Smartphone just like a regular telephone. It has all the best features of modern phones, including speed dialing, voice dialing via speech recognition and even a speaker phone. There's also a jack for the included headset. Phone functions are accessed from a standard-type menu that you navigate with a dial on the side. The battery gives you about 4.5 hours of talk time and up to 110 hours of standby time.
But the Palm inside is what makes the Smartphone special. Even if the phone is off, when you flip down the keypad, the Palm turns on. It has the familiar calendar, address book, memo pad and to-do list, all accessible from the usual four buttons at the bottom.
THE PHONE'S CHARGING cradle hooks up to your PC and synchronizes with either Palm's own software, Microsoft Outlook, or a variety of other programs. You can also download and run any of the thousands of extra Palm programs. And you can exchange data with other Palms by beaming. The unit has a generous eight megabytes of memory.
If you want to dial a number in your Palm address book, you just tap on the number and a dialing screen appears. Tap once more on a phone icon, and the call is placed. You can also access your Palm address-book numbers from the phone's screen, with the lid closed, by selecting the address book from the phone menu. Palm address-book entries can also be set up for speed dial or voice dial. While you're on a call, all the Palm functions are active, so you can look up other numbers or use your calendar. That's especially convenient if you're on the headset or speaker phone.
Because of the Palm, this phone's Internet functionality is vastly better than the typical telephone's. Instead of a numbing series of Web menus, the Kyocera comes with a Web browser and a decent e-mail program that can access your existing Internet e-mail account, both from Eudora. It also sports a variety of Palm Web applications, like an E*Trade stock program and an American Airlines program to look up flights. You can download more of them. Accessing the Web is a simple matter of just launching any of these programs. Most Web connections are made quickly.
If you have a question you want answered, or any other comment or suggestion about Walter S. Mossberg's column, please send e-mail to mossberg@wsj.com
So what are the downsides of the Kyocera Smartphone? Well, my biggest problem involves the screen. It's narrower than the screen on a Palm V, yet it displays the same number of lines and the same number of letters in a line. That means the standard font is smaller than on a regular Palm and can be hard to read, especially since the screen seems a bit dimmer than the Palm V's. To fix the problem, you can enlarge the font, but then you get fewer words on each line.
Also, the Eudora browser, at present, doesn't support secure online transactions.
All in all, however, the Kyocera Smartphone is the first really good PDA-equipped phone I've seen. If you long to merge your phone and your Palm, it may be just what you're looking for.
For answers to questions about protecting bookmarks, virus definitions, and selecting a Mac, check out my Mossberg's Mailbox column in Tech Center. |
