Samsung Offers a Peek at Combo Phone-PDA

LAS VEGAS -- South Korea's Samsung Electronics previewed here at Comdex a combination phone-PDA running the Palm operating system, and said it expects to make it available in the U.S. before the end of the year.

The SPH-i330 is a compact handset that is light on buttons and heavy on screen space. Its color, 160-by-240 pixel display is touch-screen sensitive and doubles as a dialing keypad. In PDA mode, it features all of the standard Palm OS applications such as an address book and calendar, and uses Palm's Graffiti language for inputting text.

The handset is a dual-band, tri-mode unit compatible with CDMA networks at both 800 MHz and 1900 MHz. It is also compatible with the analog Advanced Mobile Phone Service networks at 800 MHz. On the CDMA side, the telephone supports Sprint PCS Group's recently launched CDMA2000 1x network, which supports packet data rates of up to 144 kbps.

In CDMA mode, the battery offers about 2.5 hours of talk time or four hours of standby time. In analog mode, talk time is reduced to an hour but the phone can remain on standby for up to 14 hours, the company said.

The Software Side

The SPH-i330 runs version 3.5.3 of PalmSource' operating system as well as its Blazer Web browser, and is an update to a similar device that is already on sale called the SPH-i300. The company said earlier in the year that the new device would be available around September, but has missed that release date. Pricing for the device has not been announced.

One onlooker who toyed around with an SPH-i330 at Samsung's Comdex booth said the device was appealing. "I haven't figured out how to use it yet, but I like the idea that it is a phone and PDA in one," said Bill Snow, executive director of the Santa Maria Economic Development Association in Santa Maria, California. "I really resent that fact that I've got to carry around two devices."

A second Samsung phone-PDA running the Palm OS didn't make it on to the show floor here, though the company said the device should appear at the Consumer Electronics Show here in January. Called the SPH-i500, that device is in a clamshell shape and features the same software as the device on display here.

Other Options

Samsung is also working on a combination phone-PDA based on Microsoft's Pocket PC 2002 Phone Edition software, the company has said. It, too, was absent from the show floor. A representative from the company here said it was only displaying products that would reach consumers within 60 days. The SPH-i700, as the Pocket PC device is called, won't make it out in that time frame.

Like competitor Nokia, which unveiled new multimedia phones here, Samsung also showed a collection of color handsets without PDA functions. Sales of those devices reached 11.7 million units worldwide in the third quarter of 2002, up 23 percent from the 9.5 million units sold during the second quarter, Samsung said in a statement this week. It expects to sell more than 9 million CDMA and GSM mobile phones in the U.S. this year, the company said.