|
|
|
|
|
A Hybrid Solution Sedate PDA features might be best for lawyers. By Grace Suarez Dec/Jan '05 Issue |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Combination cellular phones and personal digital assistants are the rage right now. Most phones have some PDA functionality, meaning they can store phone numbers and dates, but full-fledged PDA capability requires the ability to synchronize the information stored in the phone with that stored in your computer, either in the Palm Desktop application or in Microsoft Outlook. I reviewed three phone and PDA combination units: the Samsung SPH-i500, Samsung SP-i600 and the Treo 600 Smartphone, all provided by Sprint PCS. I looked for ease of use above all. Lawyers don’t have billable hours to spend poring over manuals, checking online user groups or downloading the latest software to get their units to work. They want something that comes out of the box, ready to roll. They also want a unit they can check or enter a date into quickly while in the courtroom. Cute interfaces and downloadable ring tones are for others. Comparison of
Features |
Program Information All phone and PDA hybrids provided by Sprint PCS (www.sprintpcs.com). SPH-i500
« Treo 600 Smartphone « Shootout Winner |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Each Samsung includes an extra battery and a
cradle for charging both the phone and the second battery, but the charging
cradles are bulky. Unless you enjoy carrying extra stuff, you will have to
buy the optional travel charger. The Treo comes with only one battery, but
its travel-ready charger is much lighter. The Samsungs are smaller and lighter, but the Treo has the biggest screen. I found the clamshells easier to talk into. The candy bar-shaped Treo had me pulling it up to my ear to listen and down to my mouth to talk. Callers complained they could not hear me clearly. Others I let use the phones had similar experiences, but I have read reviews saying the Treo design is easy to use. Data input made a big difference to me. I found the phone-style keypad input of the i600 very awkward. For example, to get the letter “C” onto the screen, I had to press the number “2” key three times. For me, the easiest and fastest way to input text is the “Graffiti” shorthand invented by Palm. The i500 was the only unit with this feature. The next easiest to use was the Treo keyboard, but a few adult males I let use it found its tiny keys frustrating and had them cursing within seconds. Even I found my fingers slipping off the rounded keys. The Treo’s touchscreen helped with some data entry functions, but not with inputting characters. The i500 was the only unit I could imagine using in a courtroom to enter dates and times. The Treo has a built-in camera, which produces pictures with low resolution and no flash. While this might be fun for kids and useful for real estate brokers, a camera phone is a liability for lawyers, as many government buildings now flatly prohibit them. If you don’t want the bailiff holding your phone, the Treo is not for you. The i600 and the Treo both had slots for a Secure Digital memory card, which could be used to store additional information, such as photos in the Treo’s case. I then tested how the hybrids synced and coordinated information between the information manager in my computer (such as Palm Desktop or Outlook) and the portable unit. Both the Samsung i500 and the Treo synced with the Palm Desktop perfectly, but refused to do so with Outlook, even though the manuals claimed they could communicate with Outlook. The Samsung i600, a Windows-based unit, synced with Outlook perfectly. The Palm-based units’ failure to communicate with Outlook seemed to be based on software incompatibilities, which are probably curable, depending on how much time you are willing to spend on hold with Sprint. I didn’t have the time, so if you want to use the Palm-based devices with Outlook, I suggest you make sure your vendor provides you with the latest drivers. All the units had coverage problems in rural and coastal areas, but so does everything else I have tried. One of the drawbacks to digital connections seems to be that words are completely dropped instead of just being lost in static. I sometimes ended up sounding like a computerized voice. All of the devices could access Web sites using the Palm Blazer browser. This feature might be useful for reaching text-only sites, but for me it was too slow for practical applications. They all had the usual voicemail and e-mail access, but the i500 doesn’t have short messaging services. SMS was very awkward in the i600 because of the data input mentioned earlier, but it was reasonably useful in the Treo. The Treo’s screen is the largest, though some of my friends who are losing their ability to see up close complained about not being able to read the letters in all the units. The keys in all the units are lit from behind, which makes input easy in the dark, though some backlights went dark too quickly. All of this is adjustable at the expense of battery life. Speaking of battery life, I was unable to conduct scientific tests, but I would say you should carry the charger with any of the units, which makes the size of the charger important. Both the i500 and the i600 have voice recognition software, though suprisingly, the Treo doesn’t. The voice dialing and dictation features would be useful for lawyers, especially those who insist on talking on their cell phones while driving. All the units allowed extensive customizing of ring tones, which quite frankly seemed a waste of time. Only the Treo was easy to turn to “silent” mode, which is important in courtrooms where a ringing phone can end up the property of the court. While the i600 Windows operating system supplied calendar, datebook and short text messaging features, the Palm-based units had more applications such as a memo pad and allowed downloading of thousands of Palm-based programs.
And the Winner Is
...
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ABOUT THE AUTHOR GRACE SUAREZ is a solo attorney specializing in criminal appeals and writs. She works out of her home office in San Francisco. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Home | | Issue Archive | Resources | About Us | Contact Us | Subscribe | | Subscribers | Advertisers | Updated 11/19/04 |
