Friday, August 02, 2002

ZDNet: VoiceStream debuts dud of a phone based on Microsoft's OS An unusually thorough review (many of the recent "reviews" can be summarized as "PocketPC phones smear my make-up or force me to use an ear-bud; I hate that!"). Note: it's a 3-page article, but annoyingly the print version only includes the first page.

I think a multi-unit configuration is the most sensible approach, at least until we see breakthroughs in battery life (and likely thereafter anyway); my ideal configuration will have a small communications unit (phone with reasonable display, great battery life, some apps -- e.g., instant messaging, SMS -- and a simple means of establishing high-speed link with PC and PDA), a laptop that can easily use the comm unit as a high-speed network connection, and a Pocket PC PDA that also easily connects to the comm unit. Verizon is close to this today; they have a phone + PDA option (albeit connected via a cable) that's much less expensive than the Thera, but unfortunately the laptop option currently requires a separate card ($299 last time I checked). Overall: this stuff is getting much closer to mainstreaming...

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