Claim to Fame: Bargain cell with speech recognition and automatic dialing.
One of the first and most popular Web-enabled mobile phones is the Samsung SCH-3500. Designed for business and personal use, this titanium flip-top phone comes with such extra niceties as speech-recognition dialing and a nifty memo recorder.
When you open this $150 phone, a female voice asks you whom you'd like to call. If you've already programmed the phone, it will automatically dial as many as 20 different numbers at the sound of your voice. The standard battery allows you to talk for about 2.8 hours; the SCH-3500 will stay in standby mode for incoming calls for up to 150 hours. You can also store about 10 minutes of voice memos in the phone. Best of all, this is a dual-mode-dual-band phone, so you can make calls in areas with either digital service or the more widely available analog service.
Even though the SCH-3500 uses the same Phone.com browser as most of the other phones mentioned here, I found that this model's onscreen prompts and buttons made it trickier to use than the other cells' browsers. The browser does, however, include the same primary news and sports sites as the NeoPoint phone, and the same Sprint PCS charges apply. The screen is bright enough to easily scan headlines, and you'll see about three lines of Web-page text at once. At 5.5 ounces, the SCH-3500 is a midsize phone that's a real bargain.
Coordinates: Samsung, www.samsungtelecom.com
Claim to Fame: Poor man's StarTAC
The Samsung SCH-8500 ($199) is targeted at users who like the Motorola StarTAC's design but who want a bigger screen.
The SCH-8500 is about 20% smaller and about 1.5 ounces lighter than Samsung's less-expensive SCH-3500. The black phone is available from Sprint PCS, and it works in either digital or analog mode for voice calls. The phone includes the same vibrating alert, voice memo, and voice-activated dialing features that the SCH-3500 provides and will give you about 2.8 hours of talk time and about 150 hours in standby mode.
The SCH-8500's screen is located in the flip-up earpiece, giving you more room to read headlines and to check stock prices. Clear graphical prompts and the ability to display four lines of Web text make this model a decent cybersurfer. I found that the backward and forward keys for maneuvering Web sites made the SCH-8500 easier to use than the SCH-3500. Bottom line: This compact phone is an attractive option for those who are looking for an easy-to-read screen and good voice coverage across the country.
Coordinates: Samsung, www.samsungtelecom.com
Fast Company contributing editor John R. Quain (jquain@fastcompany.com) appears regularly on CBS News and MSNBC.
To view Web sites on a cell-phone, the sites have to be specially configured for the phones' tiny monochrome screens. Fortunately, a number of WAP portals are already available for cell-phone users who surf the Web. InfoSpace (www.infospace.com) has a slew of links that cover everything from news to entertainment. You can get quick stock quotes and sports scores by logging onto WAP2PCS.com (www.wap2PCS.com), which is only accessible on cell-phones. Another portal, smartRay.com (www.smartray.com), also includes a place to store all of your favorite bookmarks online.
If you're a gadget geek, chances are you already have a Walkman, a digital camera, and a PDA. Soon you may be able to replace all that stuff with one device: a cell-phone.
In Europe, Motorola already offers a mobile phone with a built-in FM radio, and Ericsson will be introducing a matchbook-size add-on to a cell-phone that plays MP3 music files through its T28 World phone.
Meanwhile, several companies are finally promising a Dick Tracy-style "wrist phone." Samsung expects to introduce a timepiece the size of a rugged sports watch that will double as a cell-phone. With built-in voice recognition and a small speaker, you'll be able to place calls just like the fictional detective. Casio wants to go one better by putting an MP3 player and a digital camera in a wristwatch.
Other coming attractions include new systems from companies like Televend, which will let you pay for store purchases on your cell-phone. You'll be able to get a Coke from certain vending machines by pushing a button on your cell. Televend eventually wants to equip all sorts of devices for coinless cell payments, such as parking meters that you can feed remotely, without having to leave your office.
That type of remote support comes with two big caveats: Expect to pay more for the convenience, and don't expect to see a wrist phone that will feed the meter until early next year.
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