Hello, please spare me from my ignorance. Does the QCP 6035 SmartPhone or the Handspring's VisorPhone have the QCOM's chip sets in these devices at all? If not, QCOM's future is doomed. I am the QCOM shareholder and need to make decision whether to hold this company for a few more years or just have to bite my tongue and dump it.
Thanks.
>>Finally, two companies have. Kyocera's QCP 6035 >>SmartPhone, which Verizon Wireless began selling on >>Monday, embeds a Palm organizer in a cell phone, while >>Handspring's VisorPhone -- available to VoiceStream users >>since early February -- plugs a cell phone into a Visor >>organizer.
Does the Kyocera's QCP 6035 SmartPhone
Handheld Meets Phone, With Promising Results
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By Rob Pegoraro
Friday, March 9, 2001; Page E01
A Palm organizer is the best address book I've ever seen. But you still need a cell phone to dial the numbers in it. So why not fuse the two gadgets into one?
Finally, two companies have. Kyocera's QCP 6035 SmartPhone, which Verizon Wireless began selling on Monday, embeds a Palm organizer in a cell phone, while Handspring's VisorPhone -- available to VoiceStream users since early February -- plugs a cell phone into a Visor organizer.
After trying out both for most of this week, I can report that these things are immensely tantalizing, technologically impressive and just plain cool. And expensive: The SmartPhone sells for $499, while an entry-level Visor and VisorPhone add up to $469 ($169 for the Visor, $299 for the module).
But with a separate Palm and phone you can't have an incoming call identified by a real name ("Rob Pegoraro -- cell," not "ROBCELL"). You can't consult your calendar in mid-conversation without juggling devices. You can't add to your speed-dial list without "typing" on a numeric keypad. You can't read your e-mail without scrolling every three or four lines of text.
Of the two, I liked the SmartPhone more. It's simply a better phone, with clearer sound, longer battery life, both analog and digital support, and, once Sprint PCS offers it this spring, a choice of wireless carriers. It's also smaller and lighter than a combined Visor/VisorPhone -- although, at 7.4 ounces and 5 1/2 inches long, it's still on the chunky side.
The SmartPhone's Palm-phone integration offered a shade more flexibility than the VisorPhone's -- you can add a caller to your address book with the push of a button and can select different rings for each category of contacts (business, personal and so forth). It's also easy to create speed-dial and dial-by-voice lists of frequently called numbers.
Unfortunately, you lose much of that integration when you close the SmartPhone's flip-up keypad. The screen is no longer touch-sensitive; instead, you must rely on a jog-dial switch and the numeric keypad, which can make this slower to use than a regular cell phone. To look up people in your Palm's address book, you're expected to type in their name with the numeric keypad.
Verizon includes some decent e-mail and Web-browsing software, plus a dial-up Internet account that costs you only airtime minutes. (You can also use the phone with a regular ISP.) Connection speeds max out at a slow 14.4 kbps, but for grabbing small bits of Web info and looking for new messages, it's usable and even habit-forming, even on the SmartPhone's subcompact screen.
Handspring's VisorPhone is better suited for people who (a) already own a Visor and (b) don't expect to use the phone much. Its speaker is mediocre, and the built-in Visor microphone picked up too much background noise and made me sound distant to callers. It took only a day of moderate-to-frequent calling to drain the VisorPhone's internal battery.
First, though, I had to debug this thing. It crashed incessantly until I reset the Visor and hot-synced it without installing any third-party software, on the advice of Handspring's tech support. After that treatment, the VisorPhone worked fine. Nevertheless -- it's a phone! It's not supposed to crash in the first place.
The VisorPhone's software makes the most of the Visor's touch screen, with speed-dial buttons big enough to hit with a thumb. But it's still more awkward to grab a stylus or poke the LCD with a finger, smudging it in the process, than it is to tap real, moving number keys.
The VisorPhone's blocky shape felt awkward in either a hand or a pocket. (Handspring's included hands-free kit helps a bit and keeps the screen cleaner, since it's not smushed against your face.) Because this module wraps around the top of the Visor, you can't use a regular screen cover or case -- forget to shut off the Visor and the phone is liable to dial on its own from inside your pocket or purse. Take it from me: This will be embarrassing when it happens in public.
Handspring is developing a Web browser for this; a test version was surprisingly effective at displaying pages with complex formatting and numerous images. Or you can send SMS -- short message service -- notes to other digital cell phones running on the GSM standard. In the Washington area, VoiceStream is the only such carrier (the VisorPhone I tested came with a Pacific Bell Wireless/Cingular account but roamed seamlessly on VoiceStream's network).
When it works, SMS is effortless and amazing, zapping text to and from the phone on the fly. You can also use it to send messages to regular e-mail addresses, but this option didn't work in two days of trying; a Cingular customer-support rep blamed said the company's SMS-to-e-mail gateway was having problems. That left me only one person to chat with -- one of the PR guys at Handspring.
And that's the biggest problem with the VisorPhone: Its GSM-only support limits Washington area customers to the newest wireless provider in town. So you're unlikely to find many SMS chat partners, and you can forget about using this too far outside the city. Or in parts of it -- with no analog receiver, the VisorPhone goes dead in the subway.
Both of these Palm-phone hybrids have their quirks, but they also show immense and fascinating promise. If either one were a little smaller and lighter, cost $100 less, and maybe even came with a color screen -- why, it would be mind-bendingly great! It would change everything! I would soon feel compelled to get rid of all of my other phones and concentrate all my communications into that one wonderful device.
Which, I am sure, would be staggeringly annoying to lose.
Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro at rob@twp.com.
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