I told the new Motorola phone by Nextel to call my mom. It did. And because I was driving, I pushed the button and talked to her using the speaker phone.
When I pulled over, I set up a log of my expenses. I browsed the Web. Then I relaxed with a Sega game that lets you shoot out squares to match increasingly complex shapes.
The life of a technology writer, given gizmos and gadgets to review, is hard.
New cell phone designs are released nearly every week. But the i85s, being touted by Nextel, is the first Java-powered phone in the country. And that's a big deal because customers can download specially enabled applications to their telephone, such as Expense Pad and Calculator, according to Nextel's Mont Lewis.
As more applications are developed, they'll be available over the Web.
The phone is also a two-way radio and a digital cellular with both text and numeric messaging.
The Web browser screen, while tiny, is very easy to read. It's the clearest screen I've seen considering how little it is.
The design is sleek, caught midway between the heft of a Kyocera PDA-style phone and one of the itty-bitty models. It's light, with just enough heft to make you think you probably won't crunch it accidently. And it wasn't hard to program names and related phone numbers in so that it would call someone if I told it to. Up to 20 someones, in fact.
The phone also features a voice-memo program that lets the user record brief reminders.
But Java is what sets this phone apart — and the fact that learning to use it is pretty intuitive. Aside from having to call for help when I turned it on because it asked for a SIMM number (did I mention that I'm a technology writer?), I managed to negotiate all the features without cracking an instruction manual.
You can send the numbers from your computer's phone book to their Web site, then access everything from there. It only takes a couple of minutes to set it up.
And the phone will attach to your PC so you can download new Java-based programs, according to the company's Matthew Luke, who says more programs are coming in the near future.
Luke's also fond of its word-completion program.
As you key in a text message, it tries to figure out what you're trying to say. On simple messages, it works well.
The phone comes with a quick-charge battery that will give you 70 percent capacity in 1.5 hours. The standard high performance battery offers 165 minutes of talk time and 75 hours of standby time.
The company's offering the phone for $199 for an unspecified time, then it will cost $299.
E-MAIL: lois@desnews.com