By Richard Echeandia
I don't know about you, but in addition to everything else that I need to get my job done, I have to carry around both a PDA and a cell phone. I feel particularly frustrated with technology when I look up a number on my Palm handheld and then have to re-type that number into my phone. I haven't been really motivated to spend money on any of the combination phone/PDA devices that have been available up to now. When I saw that Samsung had finally developed a device that brought together a phone and color Palm OS handheld in a single, compact device, I knew that I wanted to give one a try. It's pictured in Figure A.
FIGURE A
Its small enough, its light enough, and gosh darn, people like it.
Technical details
The Samsung SPH-I300 (at http://samsungelectronics.com/mobile_phone/ads_awards/trade_shows/cebit_2001_pdaphone.html) is a six-ounce Dual-Band/Dual-Mode phone, and it operates at 1.9 GHz (Gigahertz) in PCS CDMA. When connected to an analog network, the phone operates at 800 MHz AMPS (Advanced Mobile Phone Service) Mode. It's an 8MB, color Palm OS device that comes with a 160 x 240 pixel, 256 color display, a serial HotSync cradle, and the usual Palm OS software.
My tale of convergence
I really used the heck out of my old Palm OS device. I also use Lotus Notes pretty heavily and synchronized my Notes mail, address book, calendar, and to-do items with my Palm OS device every day. For more information on how I do that, check out my review of Pylon Pro way back in the January 1998 issue of PalmPower at http://www.palmpower.com/issues/issue199801/pylon001.html. I decided to take the next step and stopped by one of my local CompUSA stores where I was able to pick up the last SPH-I300 they had in stock.
I got the smartphone home, installed the Palm Desktop software, and called Sprint to activate the service. Once I had performed a HotSync operation, I noticed something about the phone right away. The Address Book function on the phone has been modified to support dialing right from the Address Book. This eliminates the need for me to maintain the same address information in my phone. This is probably one of the single greatest reasons to have a convergent device like this. After having used the smartphone for approximately two months now, I'm in a fairly good position to tell you what I think works and what I feel doesn't work on a device like this. Without much further ado, let's get to the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The good
The left-hand side of the phone contains an up-and-down rocker switch that allows you to scroll through the names in the Address Book application. When combined with a button that sits directly above the rocker switch, you can easily perform one-handed dialing. That's the theory. The reality is if you have a sizable list of phone numbers like mine, it takes far too long to scroll through the list to get to the phone number that you're looking for. The good news is that the phone button on the left-hand side allows you to perform voice dialing (if your wireless service is equipped for that). Very handy. The left side of the phone also is where you plug in your headphone jack to use the phone hands free.
