Is this a phone or PC?

COMMUNICATION

First the caveat: I am a Sony Ericsson user for many years now and currently the owner of a P990i, the latest in its PDA range.

Now, as a former Nokia user with a lot of respect for the brand and its products, I keep on scanning to see what the Finnish telecom major will come up with. So this time it's a phone called the N95 which allows you to shoot DVD like quality video, use GPS mapping to establish your location, play MP3, surf the web and shoot 5 mega pixel photographs with Carl Zeiss optics. If all this is not enough, you can make and receive calls as well. The N95 is marketed with the slogan, "It's What Computers Have Become".

Sony Ericsson (SE) did not think of this line but that's roughly where its new generation phones are pitched. Somewhere these chaps seem to be telling you, "Buddy, what you have plastered on your right ear is a computer." Are they also telling you, "You don't need another computer." I am not sure, as yet.

This is where I have a problem. Fascinated as I am with the SE's computer-like capabilities, my problem is precisely the computer-like capabilities. As things stand today, I am unsure I want a computer in my hands. Not because I have an intellectual problem with carrying computers in my left shirt pocket. But because the more you make it work like a computer, the less it works like a phone.

Let me give you an example. If I dialed a number by mistake on my mobile phone, in the days gone by, I could hit the cancel, red or end button and it was off in an instant. Not so with my SE. It can take seconds to 'process' the command. On several occasions the call has gone through.

Suppose I suddenly see something I want to shoot (pictures). By the time I've got the camera going, its over or gone. A normal digital camera loads up faster. Searching through the phone's directory can be a similarly daunting exercise. I can come up with several more examples where elementary speed is sacrificed at the alter of gee-whiz computing.

As a friend who has tested the N95 (I have not) points out, "By the time there are 1,000 phone numbers, hundreds of messages, scores of pictures, the whole thing is bound to slow down." That's like my SE which I quite like despite all its failings.

Of course, computers are like that. I don't think Windows Word opens any faster for all the quantum leaps in processing technology. But I am used to that. My worry is that phones are now getting there. And it's not about SE or Nokia. And that's why I think they should not be what computers become. Or want to become like computers. And yes, I don't hold a computer next to my ear.

(govindraj@business-standard.com)