If a PDA device married a cell phone ...

JAKARTA (JP): In many countries, most premium users who invested substantially in high-end models of electronic devices, have bought a highly versatile cellular phone.

Common cell phone users do not demand much more than the basics of making and receiving calls, a clear sound and that the unit does not break easily if it accidentally falls.

The masses can generally take what the premium users have become bored with using or who have not bothered to take a look at.

To keep up the smaller segment of high-end cell phone users, which brings in a more significant margin, cell phone makers must find ways to create and develop the replacement market, and what else can they do except pack more and more features into the cell phone.

That is one of the reasons we have seen all sorts of new features added into the latest models. Wireless application protocol (WAP) capability is now taken for granted. Videophone has been available for some time.

Cell phones now support games from Nokia, Motorola and others, download videos -- the first one was from Samsung -- MP3s from Siemens and others, and a slew of other features.

Add to that reason the increasingly tight competition among major cell phone makers, who are now also witnessing strong players from South Korea, especially Samsung, joining the fray. Besides, technologies always tend to converge.

Consumers do not really enjoy having to carry multiple gadgets in their pockets or briefcase, but they want their organizer, PDA, cell phone, radio, digital camera and even game box combined into one compact unit.

What should cell phone hardware makers do? They can add a cell phone module into their palm device assistant (PDA), or add PDA features to their cell phone. For some time, we have been seeing the emergence of these combinations.

The successors of one of the pioneers in the field, the Nokia 9101i and 9210 Communicators, for example, offer a limited PDA feature in addition to a cell phone.

It allows us to keep names, addresses and even photos, as well as manage our appointments with the help of a daily, weekly or monthly calendar and a notepad.

Motorola StarTac users can add a clip-on organizer to their unit and turn it into a cell phone and PDA combo. The clip-on adds a contact list, things-to-do list, calendar, memo, clock and other facilities commonly available on an electronic organizer.

Ericsson also has a smart phone with a PDA: the R380s. Both of these products allow synchronization with PC-based personal information management (PIM) applications.

In the Palm field of the PDA, there is the Handspring VisorPhone. It is actually an add-on module that we can insert into the expansion slot of a Visor PDA. This will give us a full- featured PDA and a GSM smart phone. This setup still needs a lot of fine-tuning, it seems, as the sound quality is reportedly still less than satisfactory.

Kyocera, a name that is not widely known here, has combined a Palm VIIx device with a CDMA/AMPS cell phone. This company has in fact bought Qualcomm's phone division, and its QCP-6035, which is the next generation of Qualcomm's pdQ, also supports WAP, SMS and HTML.

Still in the CDMA/AMPS segment, Samsung also has a Palm-based smart phone with 8 MB memory. The SPH 1300 looks more like a Palm device than a cell phone.

Windows CE and PocketPC PDA cum mobile phone combos are also available. Most notable is perhaps the US$1,700 PC-Ephone, which combines Web capability, 16-bit color display, MPEG and MP3 players, Bluetooth and infrared connectivity.

Sharp and Casio are also working on models that add cell phone capabilities to their popular PDAs.

So what does this sampling tell us?

First, the battle between Palm and PocketPC/WinCE will continue in the PDA cum cell phone battlefield.

Some smart phones will use proprietary operating systems and applications, but they may not be as attractive as the ones using either of the two contenders.

Third, in the next couple of years, you will have to put up with bulky and battery-power consuming handsets if you insist on having the PDA and the cell phone in one unit.

So for now, keep your PDA in your pocket along with your cell phone.

-- Zatni Arbi