PDA Phones Deliver All-in-One Convenience

Add a Phone to Your PDA

People who already own a Palm or a Handspring Visor of recent vintage may find the coming crop of phone add-ons more attractive. For example, Handspring has begun selling its $300 VisorPhone, which consists of a Springboard module that turns a Visor into a GSM phone with text messaging capabilities. The add-on will most interest the European market, where GSM is the sole digital standard, but some U.S. carriers ( Pacific Bell Wireless, for one) use a GSM network. Support for other popular North American digital networks is in the works: AirPrime, for instance, is preparing a Springboard module for CDMA networks.

These PDA add-ons don't support roaming, though, and they're expensive, since the PDA itself costs $180 or more.

If you don't require having the Palm OS in your PDA-phone, stay tuned. Microsoft has been showing a prototype of a smartphone device based on a variant of Windows CE (code-named Stinger) that's optimized for mobile telephones.

Stinger Ringer

Stinger phones won't be as powerful as Pocket PCs, which have fast CPUs that drain batteries quickly by mobile phone standards. But they will have moderately large screens and a bountiful array of Pocket PC and Web-enabled phone features. The first of these phones--for CDMA and GSM networks--are in the works from Samsung; they are scheduled to ship by mid-2001.

Other handset vendors are developing phones that will include PDA features, if not a major name-brand PDA OS. NeoPoint, for example, is poised to bring two new CDMA phones to market: the NeoPoint 2000 and the NeoPoint 2600. Both have the same roomy 11-line screen as current models do, but they are smaller and have beefed-up PDA and e-mail features. (See " Phones and PDAs Merge at Wireless Show.")

Meanwhile, competition is heating up. Motorola has announced plans for (but not details about) a Palm-phone hybrid that should give Kyocera a run for its money.

For now, though, the Smartphone might be just the thing if you want to turn two indispensable devices into one.