We marvelled at the first Palm handhelds because they stored so much information, made data entry easy with a touchscreen and stylus, and best of all, synchronised with our desktop contact managers. Since then, screens have got nicer, cases have got skinnier and Microsoft has got in on the act. And, in many respects, handhelds haven’t changed a lot over the years. For many users, they’re still primarily electronic organisers, enhanced by software that lets you edit a spreadsheet or play a game. But in the past two years, advances in processors and other electronics have given rise to a whole new breed of connected handhelds powerful devices that send and receive data over wireless networks and also double up as mobile phones. You can now use these phone/PDA hybrids or ‘smartphones’ to do the usual stuff, such as accessing your contacts and calendars. And using GPRS data services from O2 or Vodafone, you can also browse the Web, manage e-mail, send instant messages and, most crucially, make and receive voice calls. Wireless connectivity isn’t the only major hardware innovation in the current crop of smartphones. Some also come with built-in cameras, and MP3 music and MPEG 4 video players. Despite these frills, wireless has the greatest potential to change how we choose and use these devices. Business executives, who rely on phones to stay in touch and on handheld computers to store and process information, can now exchange the two devices for one. For those who want to keep track of e-mail, log on to a corporate network, or get vital information from the Internet without having to lug around a notebook, any smartphone can potentially pay for itself in productivity gains.
The smartphone
So in this diverse world of handheld computers and mobile phones, what exactly is a smartphone? Well, although used by Microsoft to brand its new mobile phone operating system, a smartphone is loosely defined as a device that combines a mobile phone with a handheld computer. Colin Holloway, marketing manager for Palm strictly defines it as a device that combines ‘a sim card with a standard QWERTY keyboard’. Within this category, we find the O2 XDA2, the PalmOne Treo 600, the Nokia Communicator 9500, the Motorola MPX and the Sony Ericsson P900. The Nokia 6600 and the Motorola MPX 100 and 200 are phone/PDA hybrids but don’t offer a full-sized QWERTY keyboard. According to GFK market research in the UK, the P900 is the most popular smartphone with 20 per cent market share followed by the Treo 600 with 7 per cent. These smartphones come in a variety of different shapes and sizes. Bashar Nejdawi, senior director, product operations for Motorola, divides them into three different types: The candy bar, the clamshell and the PDA/touchscreen. The PalmOne Treo 600 has the design of a silver candy bar. It is wider that other
smartphones, to accommodate the integrated QWERTY thumb keyboard. PDA/touchscreen in design, the Sony Ericsson P900 includes a detachable keypad that allows it to function as a conventional mobile phone. Flip down or remove the keypad with a screwdriver and it becomes a touchscreen PDA with an appropriate menu. The Motorola MPX is a dual-hinge clamshell-style phone that opens vertically for traditional phone operation and horizontally for use as an e-mail device.
Luxury devices
When we took a selection of these smartphones for a test drive, we soon discovered these devices are luxury devices and very expensive to buy. We looked at the Sony Ericsson P900, the PalmOne Treo 600 and the Motorola MPX; each model retails from EUR800 and upwards. At the moment, these devices target corporate executives and IT and senior business managers who want to get their hands on the latest high-tech gadgets and really don’t care how much they have to pay to do so. Ordinary technology users may be impressed by these devices in their display cases, but their budgets rarely stretch to buying them. If money is no object and you are willing to pay the premium for a smartphone, we guarantee that you will get some very cool technology under its hood. Both the Motorola MPX 100, the MPX, and the market leading Sony Ericsson P900 come with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth so they can connect to wireless LAN networks and personal area networks in small businesses, enterprises and public hotspots. Bluetooth also allows these smartphones to be used with a wireless handsfree set in the car or synchronised with a PC for sending and receiving text messages from your desktop. SD, multimedia card and Memory Stick Duo slots are also included so you can add up to 1Gbyte of memory to these handhelds and add hardware, such as modems and GPS receivers.
Impressive
The screens on these smartphones are also pretty impressive: the Motorola MPX features a colour display with a 320 by 240 pixel screen resolution. The Sony Ericsson P900 can display 65,536 colours, compared with 4096 on the previous generation P800 model’s display. Palm’s Treo 600 smartphone trails behind its competitors with a colour screen that offers a lower resolution of 160 by 160, but it’s still relatively bright and crisp. Overall, the Treo 600 sports a lower technical specification than its competitors. However, Palm marketing manager Colin Holloway doesn’t think that this is such a bad thing for mobile users. ‘Palm products have always been about simplicity and extending battery life for the user,’ he notes. ‘In the days when people used PDAs with mobile phones if the organiser died it wasn’t so bad, they could still use their phone. With these converged devices, they may not have that option.’ When we tested the Treo 600, we found that the battery life was terrific three or four days between charges after moderate phone and heavy Palm use. The Treo also runs a simpler operating system in the form of Palm OS 5, although unlike other flavours of the operating system that run on organisers, this version doesn’t support graffiti or any other form of handwriting input. Its built-in Blazer HTML browser makes complicated webpages readable but its POP3 e-mail application lets the device down by being slow, especially when you want to send outgoing e-mail before downloading it. These lags might frustrate heavy business e-mail users.
Mobile power
While long-battery life might be an important selling point for Palmone with the Treo 600, the Sony Ericsson P900 is no slouch either when it comes to mobile power. On test, the device received a full charge and after four days of mixed usage, including making phone calls, sending text messages, capturing video, playing MP3 music files and even jotting down notes using its clever graffiti system, it still registered more than 30 per cent of battery power in the control panel. The P900 comes with the market-leading Symbian 7.0 operating system, and with its roots in Psion’s EPOC 32, it’s generally regarded as the most energy-efficient and stable smartphone OS. Through one week of continuous use of the P900, we didn’t experience any crashes while using the device to compose text documents, edit spreadsheets, browse WAP and HTML webpages, and even capture photos and video while also playing back the video. The P900 is packed with features that are well suited to working as an enterprise tool with support for POP3 e-mail. And with the openness of the Symbian operating system, applications can easily be developed by third-party software developers and in-house IT teams for mobile workers in large and small organisations. The usual business-friendly scheduling and desktop synchronisation tools are also included in the box with the device. In addition, the P900 doubles up as a multimedia gadget. With the Symbian OS, it can be used to play java games there is no shortage of third-party applications and you can also shoot video clips with a built-in VGA camera. In several European countries, such as Germany and the UK where the mobile operators support it, you can insert these video clips, which are created in the CommuniCorder program, into MMS messages and send them to other camera-phone users. Unfortunately, this is not supported by the operators in Ireland at the moment. Video can also be played back on the device in MPEG 4 using the Packet Video application. This has the added bonus of being able to view the footage horizontally across the whole of the device by tapping the application with the included stylus pen. MP3 music files can be downloaded to the device and there’s ample space for these files that average 4Mbyte in size. Integrated into the P900 is 48MByte of memory, and additional memory can be added Memory Stick Duo card that slots into the device.
Major players
Although not a smartphone in the strictest sense as it doesn’t have a QWERTY keyboard, the Nokia 6600 sports a Series 60 interface based, like the P900, on the Symbian OS. The 6600 offers e-mail capability, a web browser from Opera and a full calendar. Nokia’s major play in the smartphone arena manifests itself in the form of the Communicator 9500. This candy-bar PDA/phone hybrid includes the Symbian OS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support, a video camera and is GPRS-compatible. Gavin Barrett, multimedia business manager with Nokia, is sure that the company’s major stake in Symbian will help it maintain a strong foothold in the smartphone market. ‘Symbian is open, allowing for application development, proprietary operating systems as the major competition,’ he says. ‘The threat of Microsoft as a mobile competitor hasn’t emerged yet.’But Microsoft is beginning to make up some ground on Nokia’s Symbian platform. For one thing, its cut-down versions of Windows Pocket PC has the support of Nokia’s biggest competitor Motorola. Motorola’s MPX 200 device runs the Windows Pocket PC for Smartphone OS and has, according to Bashar Nejdawi for Motorola, ‘the bells and whistles of a Windows mobile device. It sends e-mail, runs video clips and synchronises wirelessly with the desktop.’ The MPX 200 also has the advantage of integrating with the Outlook e-mail application, used by most PC users, so e-mail can be transferred wirelessly between the desktop and the mobile device. The Motorola MPX offers similar functionality but runs Microsoft’s Pocket PC for Phone Edition 2003 rather than its specially designed Smartphone OS. Clive Ryan, business manager for the information worker, Microsoft, believes that Pocket PC OS is well positioned to take a position of dominance in the smartphone market. Proof of this, he says, is how quickly the company has grown market share globally, which he claims is 190 per cent over the past two years. ‘There is an opportunity for Microsoft as PalmOne in its simplicity reaches its natural conclusion. Windows Mobile fits in with our vision of information everywhere, anywhere regardless of device.’ Ryan also argues that software engineers will be able to develop and manage applications for the mobile platform easily and inexpensively, and this will give Windows Mobile a key advantage over competitors. Nokia and Sony Ericsson can argue that Symbian offers the same opportunities and benefits without the need to purchase expensive licences to do so.
Price
Regardless of the OS, the smartphone models that consumers get to see in the retail stores are largely determined by the mobile operators. The Palm Treo 600 is a great device but is unlikely to be seen by most consumers as it isn’t supported by the mobile operators in Ireland. You can buy it on order from retail specialists such as Mr Calculator in Dublin, but at a price of over EUR800. It isn’t subsidised by either O2 or Vodafone. O2’s XDA 2 has become almost ubiquitous and is priced affordably at EUR469, but it was built specifically for the operator by Taiwanese company HTC. The Motorola MPX series has yet to win operator support but the company’s recent increase in mobile phone sales and increasing popularity among users, suggests that it may be subsidised in the near future. Based on what we’ve seen, the Sony Ericsson P900 is currently the best in its class and the good news is that O2 is subsiding this model EUR509 for the best-priced contract. Vodafone also has plans to subsidise the phone but no details of its offers have been released by the company thus far.
Contacts (BOLD TEXT)
Vodafone.ie For a list of approved retailers nationwide
O2.ie For more information on the XDA 2 and a list of approved retailers nationwide 3G at telephone (01) 803 0700 For the Sony Ericsson P900 Kube Solutions at telephone (045) 437877 For the Nokia Communicator 9500 Motorola at telephone (01) 402 6887 For information on the launch of the MPX series
08/06/04
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