Today's hottest (and slimmest) traditional cell phone is the Motorola RAZR v3 that weighs in at  3.3oz and is less than .5" thick. (www.motorola.com).  It comes with a quad-band GSM, MPEG4 Video, 4x Optical Zoom Camera, and blue tooth.  When closed it is 3.8" by 2.0" which allows it to fit easily in any shirt pocket!

 

Personal digital assistants (PDAs) have also evolved to incorporate digital cell phone capabilities.  While early models were great PDAs with lousy phone capabilities, today the phone quality is much better than just acceptable.  Research in Motion's Blackberry devices have long been the standard for short messaging capabilities, but their early phones were too bulky for most users.  With the roll out of their 7100 series (www.blackberry.com) they have finally made the jump to a handheld unit comparable in size to traditional digital phones.  While most of the 7100 series will meet end user needs, their latest 7100i model also incorporates GPS and long range walkie talkie functionality.

 

Microsoft has also taken their Mobile PocketPC platform to the next level with cell phone technology as evidenced by their Pocket PCs with EDGE technology such as the HP iPAQ hw6500 (http://www.hp.com) which incorporates the Microsoft Mobile operating system with a world phone, GPS, camera and Bluetooth.  Motorola has also rolled out their smaller i930 smart phone which utilizes Microsoft Mobile 2003 Second Edition without the keyboard (http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000700060657/).

 

              

 

Not to be outdone, PalmOne continues the success of the Palm line with the Treo 650, which is a standard in many firms, particularly when communications are managed with GoodLink software. In addition to being a cell phone and PDA, these devices also have web-browsing and camera capabilities allowing users to get the latest news and sports. An interesting twist to their 2006 lineup is their partnership with Microsoft and Verizon to roll out the Treo 700w, which is a 3G product that also incorporates Microsoft functionality. (www.endgadget.com)

 

Voice commands are being built into many of these units allowing the sender to say "call home" or "call the office" and the system does the dialing.  These devices are very effective for use in cars where hands free is a must.  Nokia has taken voice commands to the next level with their model 7280 that has no dial keys and relies solely on voice commands. (www.nokia.com)

 

For the person that loves gadgets, there is the Telson TWC 1150 Camera Wrist Phone that is in a class all its own.  This device utilizes CDMA phone service, has a detachable camera, includes both voice and call recording, built-in answering machine, and voice recognition technology  with a hands-free loudspeaker and predictive text input for small message dictation.

 

Communication and mobile technologies will continue to fascinate us and the integration of telephone, PDA, camera, wireless, Internet, and video will make the future more exciting than ever for those people that want to connect and move any information at any time and anywhere. 

Please note that all company names are respective trademarks of those entities and InfoTech Partners North America, Inc. does not have financial interests in products listed.

 

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Roman H. Kepczyk, CPA, CITP is President of InfoTech Partners North America, Inc. which works exclusively with CPA firms to implement today’s best practices as they transition to a “less paper” or digital environment.