ZDNet AnchorDesk: The skinny on Samsung's new smart phone

AnchorDesk

The skinny on Samsung's new smart phone

Patrick Houston
Editorial Director, AnchorDesk
Wednesday, October 1, 2003

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As one of our corporate attorneys, my colleague Teresa has to stay organized and in touch. But she was complaining to me the other day about the two devices she depends on to do both. She has a last-generation cell phone and a PDA and she's tired of coping with two devices. She wants to upgrade to a single gadget that'll both communicate and compute.

Samsung's smart phone

Samsung SPH i700 (Verizon Wireless)

This is, of course, an increasingly common yearning among professionals. I feel it myself. That's why I've been looking a lot lately at smart phones--handhelds that combine the communication capabilities of a cell phone with the computing functions of a PDA.

A NEW CROP of these combo devices have just hit the market, and, in anticipation of the holiday shopping season, more are on the way. I've tried several of them. But in this column, I want to give Teresa--and you--my take on one that I think is particularly promising, if also particularly flawed: the Samsung i700, a Microsoft Pocket PC phone that became available through Verizon Wireless last month.

There are two kinds of smart phones: those that are phones first and PDAs second, and those that are PDAs first and phones second. The i700 is one in which the PDA genes dominate.

Earlier Pocket PC-based phones that were also PDA-dominant, such as the AudioVox Thera, felt clunky in the hand. To its credit, the i700 has acquired more of the sleek savoir faire we've come to expect from today's crop of cell phone handsets.

With the standard battery attached and including the sizable 160x240, 64,000-color screen and on-board camera (an appurtenance I consider a personal perk, not a practical necessity), it weighs about 7 ounces. I found it compact enough to wear out to dinner, inconspicuously nestled in my sports coat pocket. But adding the bigger extended battery--a necessity for such a power-hungry dual device--makes it more of a handful.

LIKE MOST OTHER PDA/phone combos, the i700 proved difficult for me to manipulate with one hand. Even with the assortment of hardware buttons adorning the i700, I put myself, and others, at risk when I tried to use it while driving. In fact, the i700 comes with too many buttons. They were finicky, too: I kept inadvertently activating the voice recorder, or the on/off switch, or the brightness toggle.

Because of its overall size and relatively large display, I was gnawed by the fear of accidentally dropping it. You can't convince me that the i700 would take a lickin' and keep on tickin'. If you get the i700, you should strongly consider signing up for the optional damage insurance.

The i700 has an idiosyncrasy, too: The stylus slides out of the bottom, rather than the top. I never lost one. But I have to admit, the positioning left me fretting about losing the stylus to the forces of gravity.

The i700 is fueled by a 300MHz Intel XScale processor, which makes it worthy of Verizon's high-speed CDMA network. Although I didn't travel widely with the i700, I experienced good coverage in the San Francisco Bay Area where I live. Verizon's network is fast. While that network has nothing directly to do with the device itself, you can't currently use the i700 on any other network but Verizon's, and it's impossible to judge any phone apart from the network on which it will run. This is especially true for a smart phone designed to take advantage of connectivity to your data.

The i700's wireless synchronization software and service works as promised: With the client software running on my office PC, I was able to sync all the same data I could when it was cradled.

I ALSO LIKE the Pocket PC Phone Edition 2002 operating system. The i700 behaved reliably during the two weeks I used it. What's more, I've found dialing from the address book, or setting up the speed dial, far easier than with the Palm-based Samsung i500 I've also test-driven. Caution: Verizon couldn't assure me the i700 could be upgraded to the soon-to-debut 2003 edition of the Microsoft OS. Verizon is testing the possibility, but, I was told, it remains to be seen whether the next OS can be readily adapted to the additional complexities of a cellular telephone network.

Despite the i700's flaws, I found myself using it to work productively during my daily subway commute--reviewing my calendar, going over e-mail, and updating my task list. Those efficiencies come at a price, though: Verizon is selling the i700 for $599.99, with a two-year service contract. With a one-year contract, it goes for $699.

So a final word to Teresa and those of you like her: The i700 is more thoroughbred than workhorse. It should find a niche among style-conscious business users, including executives and big-ticket sales types who want e-mail, calendaring, and wireless data synchronization more than they want voice communications. But for everyday cell phone users, it's too data-oriented, too delicate, and too expensive.

I'm continuing to try out other smart phones, along with the data services they work with. I'll be telling you about those in future columns. Meanwhile, I want to hear from you: Have you purchased a smart phone recently? If so, let me know how it worked for you.

What do you think? Does the i700 sound like something you'd be interesting in trying? Why? Why not? TalkBack to me below!

Note to TalkBack users: We upgraded TalkBack last Friday. This means you will need to register in the new system, if you haven't already. The TalkBack username and password you used before Friday will not work anymore. We apologize for the inconvenience.

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