Smart As Thou

Mobile phones have metamorphosed from mere phones to devices that go the extra mile, offering a host of options like e-mail, web surfing, voice and data processes et al. For the business traveller who craves 24/7 connectivity, a smart phone is fast becoming an indispensable accessory reckons reckons Bhisham Mansukhani.

Alright, what would a white collared have fantasised about having on his clunky cell phone which he proudly lugged around a decade ago? Colour display would be nice. Bigger screen. More memory, expandable perhaps? Email, Internet, music, radio, wordprocessing, spreadsheets, presentations? He might as well have wished for an astral vacation.

However, ten years on, all of the above are real and accessible. It just depends on how much money one is willing to put down. The business traveller is happily spending his money on the smart phone, which has quickly become his weapon of choice.

Smarter Than Who?

What is a smart phone really? Artificially intelligent, man's best friend, intuitive vodka inventory rationing? Not yet. Smart phones are basically multi-capability devices that run on a sophisticated mobile operating system (OS) which allows a whole lump of functions to pack into and work on a single device. This device may either bear the form of a conventional candy bar or flip phone or a personal digital assistant (PDA).

Imagine being able to read the morning paper, view the news and last night's match scorecard, update your contacts to your PC without so much as a scribble, manage email from the loo, download and edit Microsoft Office files on the way to work, listen to the latest chart topper or even the radio before a morose Monday morning takes shape - all on the same device. Why not even shop for your next vacation online or download that software that monitors your calorie pillage? Maybe even call the wife. The smart phone is capable of that too, actually.

Smart phones offer both telephone and data services such as email, calendaring, Web browsing, and storing contacts. Most smart phones have a microprocessor, a decent amount of bundled memory, touch screen, keyboard and a wireless modem. The capabilities of your smart phone will be determined by the model and service provider you choose. More succinctly, the smart phone works like a modern day personal digital assistant (PDA) with some notable tweaks of course that PDA makers are themselves only yet embracing. With such a packed feature set, smart phones are set to become the ultimate mass-market phones of the future.

It is estimated that by 2006, approximately 35 per cent of mobile phones shipped in Western Europe will be smart phones. Smart phones have been hailed as next in the natural evolution of wireless user devices, with access to a world of information and entertainment options becoming available to smart phone users. With the costs of processing power and memory continuing to decline, smart phones can only get smarter and a tad cheaper every quarter, especially as more feature-loaded ones models roll in.

Choices, Choices

As with shoes, if not toothbrushes, choices have a knack of being a grace and a bit of pain. And so it is with smart phones. The Blackberry scrambled a headstart with email-on-the-go for the ascetic corporate who cared little for other convergent frills like the camera and MP3 players. In recent years, Blackberry's initial monopoly was curtailed rather appropriately by the world's leading PDA maker, Palm, when it put across the Handspring Treo. Giving users all the benefits of the a PDA while offering voice calls gave it the edge over the Blackberry, which suddenly got criticism for being rather vanilla, lacking a touchscreen, audio, video, camera et al. Nokia and Motorola weren't about to be frozen as admiring bystanders, neither was a certain Redmond-based corporation called Microsoft. Cut to the innovation strewn chase and there is frankly, a lot of choice.

How Much Is Enough?

Who better to decide on the smart phone's desirable feature set than you? A few pointers might help, however.

One type of smart phone allows for single hand usage whereas others do not. The ones that don't usually have a touchscreen - although the Handspring Treo 650 matches the Blackberry for thumb emailing, while the Nokia 9500 without the stylus takes all ten fingers to punch in or access information.

Smart phones can be either powerful workhorses or a bundle of entertainment, and although makers claim to pour both aspects into every model, the distinctions are obvious. The Nokia 9500 and Blackberry are for the ascetic businessman. Why, a N9300 is even better as it even does away with the camera. But the upcoming SE W750i and Nokia N91, flaunting audio capabilities, have no pretensions about doubling as business phones in spite of their memory expansion facility.

Again, the O2XDAII and Sony Ericsson P910i can blur this distinction to an extent, and that is where the dilemma thickens and login seems to fade. Both these phones will drive single-hand users to woe as some of the most basic functions require the use of the touchscreen. But then, there are those who discern a certain style in that exercise.

Memory expansion in several forms, be it embedded or card slots, are ubiquitous to all smart phones, although memory cards are not universally cheap. Expansion for Treo and O2 phones come the cheapest while Sony Ericsson is villainously pricey.

Camera applications have also been sinisterly leveraged with other features of the phone in most cases, although the O2XDAII with a megapixel camera makes it the most earnest for sheer value.

Handspring Treo 650, though, by popular vote, has been hitherto deemed as among the leaders of the smart phone pack. Controversially so, since the O2 dwarfs it for screen size and camera application while its rival OS Symbian is outselling it in sheer shipment volumes. Yet, its bundle of convenience sans WIFI, which is still a white elephant in the Indian context, and design make it the smart phone to have and to hold.

Do We Really Need It?

“I just invent, then wait until man comes around to needing what I've invented. “ - Buckminster Fuller, inventor.

That and many more volleys will either bounce off the portable defenses of smart phone makers or slip through accurately to take apart the occasional gimmick ala bundled software on how to cook without shoelaces. Undeterred, manufacturers are busy packing their next batch of smart phones with voice recognition for messaging and emailing, enhanced Bluetooth applications, sharper and more intuitive screens, more memory than some of the not-so-old laptops and a processor robust enough to view DVD quality video and listen to music of similar quality and memory strain. Maybe that vodka rationing software may not be that far fetched after all.

With the advent of 3G in India, smart phones are poised to become the very definition of mobile Internet surfing. All this, in spite of the fact that most corporate warriors felt their lives were just about okay before the smart phone sauntered into their pockets. Fine, it didn't happen that way. They went out and got one and they aren't about to stop. The metaphysical dig about whether our lives really need another element of sophistication simply because it's out there, is a bit like asking a housewife who snoozed through the home improvement revolution, if she needed a washing machine. Some of her ilk still don't need one, while most can't imagine life without one - which is just the way many feel about their smart phones.