Points Of Presence

By Laura Guevin
Editorial Director, BiometriTech

For years, my husband professed he would never get a cell phone unless it was a so-called smart phone, with a good amount of processing power and some fancy bells and whistles. He's not much for chatting on the phone, but he regularly used his Palm V for everything from e-mail and game playing to telnetting into his company's Web servers to troubleshoot blips and glitches. Well, I nearly keeled over a week ago when a shiny new Kyocera QCP 6035 Smartphone arrived at our doorstep.

Of course, the Smartphone itself is nothing new -- Kyocera Wireless introduced it back in November of 2000. But it's new enough to me, someone who receives countless press releases daily about the latest wireless technologies but seldom uses them in everyday life. In fact, for someone who uses computers just about every day without exception, I'm really not much of a gadget-head. I like the large screen, full-size keyboard, and intuitive usability of a personal computer, regardless of which OS or shell it happens to be running. While I've tried Palm- and Windows CE-powered handheld devices for games and even Internet access, they've never really appealed to me as standalone computing devices.

But the QCP 6035 proved to me that compact, wireless computing can pack the combo punch of handheld computing and mobile phone service -- and still be fairly easy to use. And I was really impressed with my ability to pull this puppy out while hanging out with friends to search the Internet Movie Database after an all-important question was posed: Is Ted Demme still alive? (Sadly, the young director died of heart failure in January.)

The Smartphone model we own came with Palm OS 3.5.3, and I think its true beauty is the ability to install third-party applications on the device, which comes bundled with a Eudora browser and mail client, as well as 8 MB of memory. The browser was very easy to use, and it even supports 128-bit encryption. While I'm not proficient in or comfortable using Grafitti for entering URLs and text, the popup keyboard standard on the Palm OS helped me to quickly enter URLs. Ditto for e-mail, although I honestly don't think I would use the Smartphone to send e-mail with any regularity. It's great for receiving e-mail, however, and can be configured to receive messages from several different accounts into the one Eudora Inbox. John also installed Megasoft2000's MegaLauncher interface, AOL Instant Messenger, an IRC client, AvantGo, and an SSH client for administering his servers at work. The Smartphone also supports AOL's ICQ messaging client, as well as WAP browsers and Web clipping applications.

As for the phone, it works as well as any other mobile phone I've tried, and offers digital PCS, digital cellular, and analog, as well as neat features like speakerphone, and voice-activated dialing and memos. And the wireless modem even has data and fax capabilities if you feel like hooking up a laptop through the charger or via a serial cable. If you want to use the phone and PDA functionality simultaneously, all you have to do is enable the speakerphone or plug in a headset to make your call. Additional features of the Smartphone include HotSync for sharing information with a PC, and an infrared data port for beaming data to other IR-enabled devices. And I really appreciated the backlight for the screen, which enabled me to surf the Web while sitting in my backyard on one of the ridiculously humid 80-degree April evenings Connecticut has recently been inflicted with.

I realize none of this is groundbreaking material. Devices like the Smartphone have been available for several years, and while they may have improved in terms of usability and interoperability with third-party applications, and may have even gotten smaller, they are still gadgets -- no doubt about it. I wouldn't recommend this phone for my Mom, for instance, even though she has become pretty PC-savvy over the past year, and can independently dial out, surf the Web, and send e-mail on my Dad's computer. But for those who are willing to deal with the interface issues of a small screen and somewhat unnatural means for inputting text (I realize I could always purchase a keyboard for the Smartphone, but my feeling is that an all-in-one device should be just that), this handheld is a great solution.

Laura Guevin is the editorial director of BiometriTech (www.biometritech.com), an online magazine and newsletter covering biometric technologies and products. She welcomes your comments at lguevin@tmcnet.com.