LAWTECH GURU BLOG by Jeff Beard

Wi-Fi Web Surfing on a Pocket PC & New PPC Smartphones

First, here's a useful article entitled "Wireless surfing with my Pocket PC" that covers the various web browsers and browser service providers on the Pocket PC -- perfect if you're looking for alternatives to Pocket Internet Explorer. The author set up a wireless network at home, which includes his PPC. He reviews each browser program or service from his usability perspective, and includes many screen shots. Suffice it to say, some were up to the task. Others required a lot of left-right scrolling, which I call "tennis browsing", not a good thing.

Second, just when you think the Palm OS will own the smartphone market, there's several new Pocket PC smartphones that could make you sit up and take notice. Right on the heels of its Palm-powered brother, the Samsung SPH-i500, there's the Pocket PC-powered Samsung SCH-i600 (pictured on the left), as featured on Verizon's site as the SPH-i600. I was immediately struck by their similarity in appearance to the Kyocera 7135 smartphone. In this case, imitation isn't flattery, they're just capitalizing on a smarter design.

Motorola also jumped on the PPC flip-smartphone wagon, with their recent MPx200 (aka V700) device (pictured on the right). Phoneyworld.com has a good review.

With these two releases, PPC smartphone manufacturers have finally "gotten it" that we don't want big honking iPaq-shaped devices for our cell phones. Personally, I still like the Palm-based Handspring Treo 600, but I certainly wouldn't object to seeing it with a high-resolution display and a better way to protect the screen, which is where the flip style comes in handy.