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Walter Mossberg Wall Street Journal

December 13, 2003

As cell phones add more features, one fact becomes increasingly clear: The cell phone makers stink at writing software. This wasn't much of an issue when all people did on cell phones was to make voice calls. But with the addition of e-mail, Web browsing, photography and other functions to phones, user interfaces have become impenetrable.

Two companies, however, know something about how to write software for handheld devices. They are PalmSource, which makes the Palm operating system, and Microsoft, which makes the Pocket PC operating system. Both are way ahead of cell phone makers in this area.

PalmSource and its partners have already shown they can do great cell phones. The brilliant Treo 600, from palmOne, uses the Palm operating system and is the gold standard in smart phones. Samsung's less ambitious, but smaller, i500 is another very good Palm-based smart phone.

Now, Microsoft is entering the cell phone business in the United States with two new phones that use a spin-off of the Pocket PC software called by the ridiculously long name "Windows Mobile software for Smartphones."

I've been testing the first two U.S. phones to use this new Microsoft software: the Motorola MPx200, offered by AT&T Wireless, and the Samsung i600, offered by Verizon Wireless.

Neither phone is anywhere near as good as the Treo 600. Unlike the Treo, they lack keyboards for entering large amounts of text, so I can't recommend them for serious e-mail users.

They're really not even in the Treo's category. They're smart phones for people still interested primarily in making voice calls, but who want a few extras. These extras include the ability to synchronize easily with PC-based calendars and address books, and to do light e-mail and a little Web browsing. The phones can also play music, and both accept expansion cards.

I liked the Microsoft Windows Mobile software on both phones, with a few caveats. Except for one big flaw, it's much better than the typical software interface from phone makers and carriers. The software allows the phones to easily synchronize calendars and address books with Microsoft Outlook on a Windows PC. I had no trouble importing scores of dates and an address book of nearly 900 names, and synchronizing changes made on the PC or the phones.

When you start dialing a phone number or entering a contact name, the Microsoft software rapidly searches even large address books to find the entry. It also does a good job of integrating voice calling, e-mail, calendar and contacts in a clear, colorful home screen that's simple to navigate with one hand. The home screen shows, at a glance, upcoming appointments, the number of waiting e- mails and recently used programs.

Of the two phones, the Motorola MPx200 is smaller, more attractive and less expensive. AT&T charges $299 for the phone. The Samsung i600 is sold by Verizon for much more -- $499, though there's a $100 rebate with certain trade-ins.

Both phones worked OK. Their big flaw is that the Microsoft software is painfully slow to identify incoming callers, even if they are calling from numbers included in the phone's address book. The process is so slow that in a dozen tests, neither phone ever identified a known incoming caller on its screen before the calls went to voice mail. Microsoft and the phone makers are working on the problem.

The Microsoft software also makes it hard to configure some third- party e-mail systems. AT&T fixes this by providing a very nice Web site that configures these complex settings automatically, over the air. Verizon doesn't do this.

But Verizon does have something AT&T lacks. It offers average consumers the ability to synchronize their phones wirelessly, over the air, with Outlook on their home PCs. I tried it and it worked, albeit slowly and inconsistently.

The Motorola phone was very slow, with irritating lags in executing commands. The Samsung was faster. Also, the Motorola has no speakerphone. while Samsung does.

AT&T has crippled one of the best features of the Microsoft software -- a toolbar at the top line of the home screen that shows the most recently used programs. On the AT&T phone, this has been changed to a fixed list, prominently featuring an icon for the company's mLife service offerings. Verizon also has altered the home screen to point users toward its online services, but in a less destructive way.

Both AT&T and Verizon charge an arm and a leg for monthly data plans. Both favor plans that force you to estimate how many megabytes of e-mail and Web pages you'll use in a month, and then charge you extra for going over. They do have unlimited-data plans, but they're very expensive. Verizon's costs $50 a month, in addition to voice-call charges, and AT&T's costs $80 a month, on top of voice charges. By contrast, Sprint charges only an extra $15 a month for unlimited data on the excellent Treo 600.

Microsoft has a good start with its software for smart phones. But until Microsoft and the phone makers fix the awful caller ID problem, and AT&T and Verizon cut unlimited data prices, I can't recommend these two phones.

Wall Street Journal

(C) 2003 Chicago Sun-Times. via ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved

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