| For at least three years now, cellphone and PDA (personal digital assistant) makers have been trying to come up with a device that does away with the need for a corporate footsoldier to carry a mobile phone, a PDA and a notebook computer for accessing mails and the Internet. |
| There have been honourable efforts in O2's XDA units, Sony Ericsson P800/P900, Palm Tungsten Wireless or the iPaq from the HP stable. These products have their own unique compelling features, but have not come to the ideal "all in one" device that could be described as being truly functional. |
| The Nokia 9500 phone, which I reviewed last week, comes close. The latest in the Finnish company's "Communicator" series, the 9500 takes a long stride in the evolution of the PDA-phone models. It transcends the gap between being a clunky piece of electronics to being a slightly oversized model. |
| The phone weighs a little more than 220 grams and has a 148 x 57 x 24 mm-dimensioned form factor. That is not small, but is a distinct improvement over the previous Nokia Communicator models. |
| The 9500 is clearly positioned as the phone-PDA for the mobile worker. It has a killer feature in being able to offer data access through either GPRS/EDGE networks or 802.11b/ WiFi networks. |
| GPRS or global packet radio service and EDGE or enhanced data rate for global evolution are data access technologies riding on GSM mobile phone networks offering peak access speeds between 140 kilobits per second and 400 kbps, while WiFi is a high-speed wireless data technology that enables downloads as fast as 11 megabits per second. |
| I used the 9500 on Sunday Communications' GPRS network in Hong Kong. What impressed me most was that the 9500 allowed me to surf to my favourite news aggregation service, search for a profile of the person who was addressing a group of newspersons I was part of, and quickly look up a tit-bit of information being discussed in the interview "" all in real time! About 80MB of resident memory and a 200 MHz chip powering the device helped. |
| The 9500 user can also download emails, engage in instant chats, access her corporate intranet through a secure VPN (virtual private network) solution and use popular corporate applications tailored for use on the latest Communicator. |
| Nokia has announced partnerships with other giants in the enterprise space like SAP and IBM Global Solutions and is fairly advanced in developing solutions around the 9500 for the pharmaceuticals industry. |
| It is aiming at the PDA-using mobile workforce (for instance, sales or maintenance people or insurance inspectors who can use the in-built camera for clicking evidence) and hopes providing connectivity through GPRS/EDGE networks or WiFi hotspots will convince users to switch to the 9500. |
| Like its predecessors, the 9500 can be flipped open to reveal a 640 x 200-pixel screen with 65,536 colours and a full QWERTY keyboard. The keyboard is a bit small and takes getting used to. The 9500 has a five-way navigational key on the cover and a nine-way charting key on the keyboard. |
| Yet, it seems inadequate for those used to a touch pad or a pinball on a laptop. Nokia marketing head for Asia Pacific Tony Boatman told me that some changes are expected to the navigational key by the time the 9500 comes to the market and I hope he has a touch pad in mind, even if it is a tiny one. |
| The 9500 also suffers from the problem of not having a touch-sensitive screen. For Communicator fans, this is not an issue, but for the average PDA user, this can be a let down in the user interface. In future models, Boatman hinted, this functionality would be addressed. |
| All said, the 9500 is a neat gizmo for the executive on the road aiming to make best use of dead time and comes close to what would be an ideal device to access mails, surf the Internet, log on to intranets and run customised applications. |
| The variables deciding its success will be its pricing and how soon it is made available in retail markets. For now, gizmo enthusiasts will have to wait till the fourth quarter of calendar 2004 to be able to buy the product. |
| (The writer works with perZuade. His views are personal and may not be endorsed by his employers, the company's investors, customers or vendors. Comments may be sent to josey@perzuade.com) |
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