NYT -- Four new palmtop-cellphone hybrids are hitting the market this fall. How do these do-it-all products compare?
October 3, 2002
Cellphones, and Then Some: The Latest High-Tech Mergers
By DAVID POGUE
As aliens observe us through their intergalactic telescopes,
they must laugh their little green heads off at certain
illogical aspects of human behavior. We wash down a
super-size pizza with a low-cal beverage; we pursue a love
interest more intently the more we're rejected; and we buy
high, sell low.
Gadget freaks often exhibit their own bursts of bizarre
behavior, like carrying around one electronic gizmo to look
up phone numbers and another to dial them. That problem, at
least, is approaching a solution with the arrival of the
combination palmtop-cellphones known as communicators.
It's quite an engineering challenge: you want the biggest
possible screen and keyboard but the smallest overall
dimensions. This season, you can choose from four new
attempts to take on the task. Each comes from a corporate
consortium of hardware, software and cellular companies,
but the crucial players are Microsoft, Kyocera, Handspring
and a start-up company called Danger.
Each communicator combines the functions of telephone,
e-mail terminal, instant-messaging pad and Web browser.
Better yet, all the new models capitalize on the new,
faster Internet "pipes" that the cellphone carriers have
just installed. Generally for an extra fee, these new
networks (called 1x, GPRS or 3G, along with a variety of
carrier-specific marketing names) bring Web sites to your
little screen with roughly the same speed as a PC's dial-up
modem. Previous Internet cellphones, by contrast, made
smoke signals look speedy.
Most people are mercifully spared any awareness of the
operating system inside their phones, but Microsoft wants
to change all that. Its new phone software, called PocketPC
Phone Edition, makes its debut in a new palmtop-cellphone
($550) from T-Mobile.
The software is just what you'd expect from Microsoft in
2002: color-coordinated, clean-looking, blessed with a few
nice features - a Notes page associated with each call in
the Call Log, for example - but overflowing with nested and
sometimes confusing dialogue boxes that only Microsoft
engineers could love. (On the Web bookmarks list, for
instance, when you tap Add, the screen says, "Select an
item to delete." Nice to know Microsoft has a sense of
humor.)
The handset itself is a big, broad slab with an unprotected
screen. To dial, you're supposed to tap small "keys"
displayed on the glass.
Virtual keypads like this invite grease and smudges from
your fingers, make touch-dialing impossible, and don't let
you control how long each "key" is pressed when, for
example, you're trying to operate your home answering
machine using touch tones. And then, as though to rule out
any chance that one square millimeter of glass is not
smudged, the screen is designed to rest against your cheek
as you talk.
T-Mobile might have avoided these problems by studying the
failure of earlier, similarly designed gadgets (the
Handspring VisorPhone, for example). Those who forget the
flops are condemned to repeat them.
On paper, T-Mobile's second new offering, the Sidekick,
might not seem a much better bet. Who, in 2002, would have
the gall to release a gadget with a no stylus or touch
screen, no color, no way to synchronize data with a PC, and
a brand-new operating system that can't run any existing
add-on programs?
Yet incredibly, the Sidekick is a fantastic success, thanks
to the most thoughtfully conceived hardware and software
since the original Palm Pilot. (You may have heard this one
called the Danger Hiptop. That was before T-Mobile picked
it up, in readiness for its official release this week.)
Instead of squeezing a tiny thumb keyboard onto the width
of the device, as the RIM BlackBerry and Handspring Treo
do, the designers laid it out the long way, with the gadget
held in landscape orientation. As a result, the keyboard is
much more spacious and complete. Praise be, it even has a
dedicated @ key. Which leaves only one problem: Where does
the screen go? In Danger's ingenious solution, the screen
conceals the keyboard. When you need to type, the screen
pivots at a corner with a spring-loaded pop, producing what
could be a laptop for hamsters: screen above, keyboard
below.
The software is equally clever. Every feature seems to be
where you want it, when you need it. You don't even miss
the stylus and touch screen: the pushable scroll wheel is
quick and simple.
The programming makes all the difference. Just a few
examples: on the Web, the built-in browser fills in the
"www" and ".com" for you. You can set up the device to
silence its musical rings and chords after a certain hour
of the night (or during class hours at school). And if
there were any doubt that the Sidekick was designed to
appeal to a younger crowd, you can conduct 10 AOL Instant
Messenger chats simultaneously; a simple keystroke switches
among them.
The Sidekick has its blemishes. It's biggish, about the
size of a stuffed bifold wallet. You can upload your phone
numbers and calendar events to a Web site that is
continuously synched with the Sidekick, but the Sidekick
doesn't communicate with your computer. Dialing the phone
by using the keypad (as opposed to using the speed-dial
list or address book) is on the awkward side, too, because
you have to open the screen to get at the keys, and then
close it to talk. And although type and graphics on the
grayscale screen are razor-sharp, the microscopic type is
not designed with middle-aged eyes in mind.
But you can forgive quite a bit when you discover the
price: after a $50 rebate, it's $200 - less than half the
price of its rivals. The service price is right, too: $40 a
month buys 1,000 text messages, 1,000 weekend minutes, 200
whenever minutes, and - get this - unlimited Internet time.
Well-heeled teenagers, unite!
If the Sidekick is a cheap, fun and funky Volkswagen
Beetle, then the new Kyocera 7135 ($500 to $600) is a
Mercedes: handsome, luxurious, and loaded with features.
Because it is based on the Palm operating system, it runs
any of the thousands of Palm-compatible programs (games,
tip calculators, Web browsers and so on).
Yet this device, which Kyocera says will be available "in
plenty of time for the holidays," is much more phonelike
than its closest competitor, the Treo. Only the Kyocera has
a true number-dialing pad, for example. It also offers 30
dial-by-voice numbers, 99 speed-dial numbers, and a serious
battery (3.5 hours of talk time). Another huge perk: the
Kyocera's battery is removable so that you can keep a
second battery charged and ready. (The synching cradle for
your Mac or PC can charge the spare.)
The Kyocera even stomps all over some of the Treo's
organizer features. It offers a much more colorful screen
(65,000 colors versus 4,096), an expansion slot for extra
memory, and even a built-in MP3 music player.
Nothing's perfect, though, especially not in the
communicator category. For example, the 7135's main phone
screen is, inexplicably, not touch-sensitive. If you try to
use the stylus, an error message tells you to use the menu
keys instead.
Note, too, that instead of a miniature alphabet keyboard
like the Treo's for composing e-mail, the Kyocera has a
conventional Palm-type writing area tucked just below the
hinge. Depending on your enthusiasm for Palm's Graffiti
handwriting-recognition alphabet, this arrangement could
make the Kyocera a weaker candidate for e-mail.
The Kyocera is about half an inch thicker than a Treo, too
- which, in a shirt pocket, might as well be a mile. On one
hand, with great thickness comes great durability. On the
other hand, I couldn't find a single male who could
contemplate carrying it in a pants pocket; its bulge would
look like a second knee on your leg. Purse-carrying women
raved about it, though. And a number of gents volunteered
that wearing it on the included belt clip, with the
top-mounted caller-ID display visible, wasn't such a bad
solution.
Besides, if it's small you want, you'd be better off
shopping for the Handspring Treo 300, available from Sprint
for $500. It's the only communicator that not only fits
into a shirt pocket, but even disappears completely inside
it. Of course, tininess has its drawbacks, too, like a
slightly shrunken screen, a cramped alphabet keyboard and a
less-than-optimal battery.
But like the nearly identical Treo 270, which works on the
Cingular or T-Mobile networks, this model offers sparkling
software that makes one-handed dialing a quick, convenient
and stylus-free process.
For the moment, you can't have it all. The leading
candidates offer economy and delicious software (the
T-Mobile Sidekick); beauty and luxury (the Kyocera 7135);
or shirt pocketability (the Handspring Treo). To find all
of these virtues in a single device, you'll have to wait
another year or two. At that point, the aliens will no
longer be amused - they'll be jealous.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company. |
