Pocket Convergence
June 24, 2003
Things are hopping in the mobile world.
Microsoft this week simplified their Pocket PC and Smartphone efforts into Windows Mobile 2003″.
Palm is acquiring Handspring, which just brought out the Treo 600, the latest update of their Palm / mobile phone hybrid. A week or two ago they announced that their wi-fi enabled Tungsten C would soon have a VOIP phone client.
Nokia announces that ‘life goes mobile’ while cutting imaging deals with Kodak, multimedia deals with the Realplayer folks, announcing their new 6600 smartphone, and in the meantime selling their existing camera-enabled and PDA-like 3650s like they were hotcakes.
The mobile convergence is now well and truly upon us; phones, PDAs and digital cameras battling it out for the real estate in the pockets of the well connected geeks other ardent technophiles.
Analysts are telling us that smartphones are heavily impacting PDA sales; other folks feel that Palm is in trouble because they aren’t becoming phonecentric fast enough.
I think an enormous factor is getting overlooked here, however.
Awhile back, mobile carriers started pushing data access with the idea that the demand for connectivity anywhere would outweigh exorbitant minute or volume based pricing. Users however stayed away in droves, largely preferring to wait until they could get to a cheap land-based connection, or at least a wi-fi hotspot where they could pay by the hour and have a latte in the process.
The mobile carriers are starting to get it, however. Recently, and with very little fanfare, T-Mobile started offering unlimited internet access on their mobile plans for $20 a month. It’s not wi-fi by any stretch, but suddenly the incremental cost of being able to check your e-mail anywhere (either on your smartphone, or via a bluetooth or IR connection to your laptop or PDA) has gotten a lot cheaper.
Smartphones now make a world of sense. For me, nothing is quite as useless as a disconnected information appliance (of any size)—my data and my work are spread across an array of connected machines, and if I can’t get a connection, even a narrow one, about the most I’m going to do is check my calendar, play a little music, read an e-book or drum my fingers until I can get reconnected.
If this becomes the start of a trend, and more mobile providers turn towards unmetered data, then the smartphones (Symbian, Windows Mobile, or otherwise) are going to be the winners by default, at least over the short haul.
| 2.8 |
Chuck Lawson · Filed Under 
the one thing I wonder about with these new services are the funky proxy servers you have to go through. any adventures you can share?
I’ve not given it much of a try yet, but I’m going to have to live on it for about a week soon, so I’ll doubtless have a lot to say afterwords (or, connectivity willing, perhaps “during”). I’ll try to gather everything up and give it all a pre-test over the next week or two.
My understanding however, at least in the case of T-Mobile, is that there are three different access points you can use, two of them apparently behind proxy servers, and a third which is VPN capable and actually assigns you a real, genuine IP address.
One of my big concerns is just what kind of throughput I can get through GPRS—I really, really, really need to be able to use Terminal Services, and that starts getting a bit iffy if you get much below 28.8 (and isn’t exactly pleasant at 28.8).
- Chuck
have you tried wireless tuneage? the only real problem I have with my toshiba e755 is it ain’t loud enough.
No, not yet… One of my few complaints about the Sony NX70v is that Sony did a proprietary audio implementation, so the only thing that will play decent audio on it are their included applications, like the somewhat anemic MP3 player. That’s kept me from trying any streaming audio via Wi-Fi on it.
I’ve been drooling over getting a memory stick bluetooth adapter, but that would mean getting CF memory (and the third-party driver) since I’m currently configured for memorystick memory and the CF Wi-Fi card.
The Bluetooth adapter is only available as an import ($$$).
This adds up to enough that I decided to say to hell with it, and just ordered one of the new IPAQ 2215s, with Windows Mobile 2003 and built-in Bluetooth.
It doesn’t have a lot of the things I like about the Sony (the keyboard, and the various Palm apps I use), but it should let me grab a GPRS connection via Bluetooth and sync to my desktop Outlook (so I can get post-spamfiltered mail) and do terminal services, with no more than the PDA in my hand and the phone in my pocket.
Not sure what the audio is like. Apparently they moved the speaker to the back on this one to get the small form factor, so it probably won’t be anything to write home about without headphones or external speakers. I wonder if it would work with a pair of the new Bluetooth headphones?
Now if the bloody thing would just hurry up and get here! (I ordered it an hour ago, geeze…)
- Chuck