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For many reasons, telephone handsets are inferior to larger handheld devices for working with wireless data. The most obvious deficiencies are the tiny displays and the difficulty entering information using a phone keypad. But there's another, subtler problem. With handhelds such as Palms, PocketPCs, or even many two-way pagers, you can add third-party custom applications. On phones, you're stuck with whatever the phone manufacturer and the carrier have provided.
That's beginning to change. Of course, there are programmable phone-PDA hybrids, such as the Palm-based Kyocera Smartphone. But now even standard handsets are becoming programmable.
The first of the new breed is the Motorola i85s, which works on the Nextel iDEN network. The key to its programmability is a new version of Sun Microsoystems' Java programming language called Java 2 Micro Edition, or J2ME. Like standard Java, it allows programmers to write applications that can be run on many devices. But J2ME is stripped down to work with phones' limited memory and processing power.
TODAY'S MENU. The software currently available for phones is limited but demonstrates the technology's potential. Nextel service, which includes a unique push-to-talk feature for communications among a predefined group of users, is very popular in the construction industry. So, Nextel wrote a special calculation for computing the cost of building materials. A standard four-function calculator is also included. What's lacking, but possible, are custom programs that use Nextel's network to get data. However, Nextel offers tools to help companies develop their own Java applications.
As a phone, the Motorola i85s is fairly typical of contemporary Web-enabled handsets. It's a medium-sized unit, about the same size as the popular Nokia 6100 series, with the very good radio quality we expect of Motorola and decent battery life. One nice feature offered by Nextel is the ability to rearrange menus to suit your preferences. Since most wireless carriers sell specific menu slots to service or content providers, they block users from changing menu arrangements.
The i85s is officially priced at $295 with a service agreement, but Nextel offers an introductory price of $195. A large variety of service plans are available, beginning at $39.95 a month.
Wildstrom is Technology & You columnist for BusinessWeek. Follow his Flash Product Reviews, only on BW Online Edited by Beth Belton
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