A Sprint Through the Web

Phone Surfing: It's Not Your PC's Web

Be warned: The Web you get on a mobile phone is not the Internet. Entering URLs on a phone is just plain difficult, and many sites are not yet available in a format--such as handheld data markup language (HDML) or wireless markup language (WML)--that can be viewed by the phone's browser. Instead, Sprint PCS and other carriers offer a menu of installed links to major sites.

When I turned on the phone, I selected the Web icon and was taken to a menu that began with "@Sprint PCS" and included Yahoo, Amazon.com, Fidelity, Go2online, Bloomberg, CNN, and FoxSports. You can manually enter additional sites into a Bookmarks folder. Some carriers let you set up your bookmarks on the desktop, but for now Sprint PCS requires that you key them into the phone, which can be tedious.

"We'll shortly offer more customization," Jowers says. Already you can use a Web-enabled Sprint PCS phone as a modem to wirelessly browse the Web with the full browser on your laptop.

Beyond the initial menu listings, Sprint PCS Wireless Web service includes channels on which you can pick from wireless content by category. For instance, the finance section offers links to Fidelity as well as Ameritrade, Bloomberg, and Go2money. And shopping includes Amazon.com, FTD.com, EBay, ECompare, Barnes & Noble, and Go2shopping.

Wireless access is all about time. Scrolling to content is slow. Phones don't cache pages like browsers, so going back is as tiresome as going forward. Besides the menu drawbacks and coverage holes--Sprint PCS Wireless Web only works where Sprint PCS voice coverage exists--entering URLs with the alphanumeric keys is nearly impossible. I punched in PCWorld.com only to find a WAP version of the site is not yet available.

Best Bet: Big Sites

I'm impatient, so I returned to the big name sites on page one and clicked on Amazon.com. With a bit of tedious input, I found the CD I wanted and hit "buy." I tried to use my existing Amazon.com log-in, but I was asked to reenter all my billing information, so I gave up.

News updates, directions, weather, and e-mail (through Yahoo and soon AOL) are more user-friendly applications on the Sprint PCS Wireless Web.

Mapquest supplied directions to a nearby store while I wandered the streets one day. San Francisco is a city of microclimates; by entering my zip code, I got the latest forecast for my neighborhood from the Weather Channel.

Caught on a commuter train the day the Microsoft verdict was due at noon Pacific Time, I checked the news wires on the Sprint PCS phone. I learned that Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson postponed his announcement by an hour and a half. Indeed, I had time to cover the Microsoft decision.

I'm a hockey fan, and this week is the Stanley Cup finals, so I hit FoxSports News. I selected NHL and got the score from the game the night before, which I already knew. I then hit "latest sports news" and got a list of headlines; I picked the one that mentioned Stanley. Finally, the wire story I wanted--well, at least, four or five lines of it. That's when I learned that scrolling and reading on a phone is a blinding process.

Exiting Sprint PCS's Wireless Web is trickier than entering. I could just see the minutes racking up while I tried to back out of the menu page. Finally I hit the "end" button and was asked: "Want to exit the wireless Internet?"

"Yes," I tapped. Gladly.