Better All the Time: Samsung Smart Phone Raises the Bar on Consumer Design
The most important thing Samsung (http://www.samsung.com) has done with its new I300 Palm PDA cellular phone was to create a truly eye-catching piece of consumer electronics. Throw in a color screen, and it's hard to believe that a couple of years ago some people doubted the viability of the smart phone concept. Fortunately, device manufacturers aren't listening and nearly all of the major hardware companies have or are planning to have competing models out in the next year.
And it isn't just handset manufacturers. Take PDA manufacturer Handspring (http://www.handspring.com) for instance. Next year it will be releasing two smart phone models one color, one grayscale, both with optional qwerty keypads similar to that of a two-way paging device. Handspring has already made a splash with its VisorPhone, a springboard expansion module that turns the Handspring Visor PDA into cellular phone.
Likewise, the wireless data boom is seeing an increase in cooperation between non-traditional partners. Research-in-Motion (http://www.rim.com), makers of the extremely popular Blackberry 2-way pager reached a supply agreement in October with wireless network operator VoiceStream (http://www.voicestream.com) whereby the latter will begin offering customers RIM devices designed to function on the operator's GSM/GPRS, 2.5 generation network. Traditionally, the Blackberry, a data-only handheld has only been available on paging networks.
The Samsung I300 surpasses all previous smart phone models currently available including the Kyocera 6035 (http://www.kyocera-wireless.com) of which I am a proud owner. As far as their implementation of the Palm OS goes, Korea's Samsung hasn't made many improvements. What they have done is create an improved form factor, implementing a design that's lighter and slimmer than its predecessors and competitors, while maintaining the look and feel of both a traditional phone and PDA.
