Tech: is the latest really the greatest?

REALITY CHECK

At MOBILE BUSINESS ADVISOR, we get a daily deluge of announcements about "great" new mobile and wireless technologies. The trick, of course, is finding the gold. What technologies and features are truly compelling?

The goal of this column is to look at mobile and wireless technologies to see how useful they really are. To this end, we queried several of our technical editors to see if they think the latest really is the greatest. They live and breathe technology, they're mobile, and they're opinionated.

This issue, we asked technical editors Steve Caudill, Ken Getz, and Larry Whipple to examine push-to-talk and camera phones.

PUSH-TO-TALK

Push-to-talk is a walkie-talkie-like feature for phones. Nextel has it and is making a bundle on it; all the other carriers want it and are spending a bundle to implement it. Verizon Wireless just launched its push-to-talk offering. But, will phone subscribers outside Nextel's field-worker sweet spot find any use for push-to-talk?

If a mobile carrier in your area launched push-to-talk, would you switch?

KEN: Funny, the only people I've seen using this are repair people--it never occurred to me that normal folks who don't run around in tool belts and white vans might find a use for this feature. Yet, it's suddenly become a hot ticket.

Nextel provides nation wide push-to-talk service, and I could see how this would be useful for anyone who needs constant connection with another subscriber. Families who need to be in contact, business partners, and teens (oh, my, how the teens will love this) might want to take advantage of this feature.

Personally, the less I get called, the better. I got rid of my Blackberry for this very reason (I don't want to be on that tight a rope), so I'm not one of the prime candidates for this feature. I wouldn't jump on it, but I'm sure the average 15-year-old would!

STEVE: Phones, especially mobile phones, come with so many bells and whistles they're often hard to recognize as phones. I think some of the people in my office spend more time downloading music clips to use as their custom ring than they do using the phone to communicate with others.

Naturally, because it's a cool new feature, nay company uses Nextel phones with the Direct Connect push-to talk, feature. Despite nay skepticism, this feature has worked well for my organization. I regularly have trainers and field engineers at customer sites who need to ask quick questions. They can keep a few push to-talk numbers handy to easily reach individuals at the home office. Although a regular call would work almost as well, there's something about the radio like communication style of push-to talk that keeps conversations short and to-the-point, making interruptions less painful and encouraging people in the field to return to working with the customer.

Right now, our pricing plan makes it attractive for us to use the feature, so much so that I'm looking into a push-to-talk only phone for use at the support desk. We've even found that those of our customers who carry similarly outfitted phones are storing our push-to-talk address to call for support. I'm sure this won't scale well, but it's having a noticeable impact on customer satisfaction. The immediate feedback push-to-talk lets us give our customers makes us appear to the very responsive. Although push to talk isn't useful for everyone, in our circumstance it has turned out to be an excellent feature for our highly mobile training and field engineering staff.

LARRY: A number of cellular phone manufacturers and service providers are all aflutter about providing you a walkie-talkie on your cell phone. I've had a Nextel phone for more than two years (this might be a record for me). Both of the phones I've had (the Motorola i85s and the Motorola i90c) support the Direct Connect feature. I can count on one or two hands the number of times I've actually used it. I Fred using it is at best clumsy and sometimes downright annoying. The constant push, wait, hold and talk, release, wait, listen, wait, push, wait, hold and talk, wait ... gets annoying after even a very short chat and makes longer conversations almost impossible. Couple that with trying to talk with someone who has little or no experience with two-way radios, and you end up with a real headache.

Are they totally useless? Of course not. Most products that make it to market have a niche, and this is no different. For organizations with off-site personnel who just need to communicate short messages--for example, taxi services--this works great. If you want to have a free conversation though, you'll probably find it a challenge.

Push-to-talk systems are to your cell phones what the old walkie-talkies you used as a kid are to your household phone system: a lot of fun, a great idea for short messages, but if you want a real conversation, just make the call.

CAMERA PHONES

Prices are dropping, but does that make picture-taking "must-have" or just "nice to-have"?

Would you ditch your "traditional" camera in favor of a camera phone?

KEN: I'm conflicted on this one. On one hand, I've never understood the compulsion to photographically commemorate each and every moment of my life. I don't need a camera with me all the time. On the other hand, there are times when I find myself saying "Darn, I wish I'd brought the camera along!" or "Wouldn't Mom love to see this?" and a camera phone would be handy.

I have a friend who uses his camera phone all the time, but I can't help feeling a little like it's just a new toy. After a while, I have a feeling the rush of taking a photo from a phone will wear off.

Is this a must have? Not for me. I need a tiny phone that fits neatly in my pants pocket. Until they make a camera phone that's no larger than my tiny Nokia 6100, I'll let it pass.

LARRY: Phone manufacturers want to sell phones. I trust this doesn't come as a surprise to anyone. In their effort to sell you their latest and greatest, they're pitching all sorts of innovations and add-ons. One of the latest is the camera on your phone. Although it might seem cool to have a camera on your cell phone, before you lay out big bucks for it, make sure you think it through. Here are a few facts to consider:

1. The resolution of must of these add-ons is downright archaic; the most common being around 640x480. I've seen them higher and lower, but nothing even close to what's needed to create a reasonable quality print for anything but a small picture.

2. Most phone cameras come with essentially no optical zoom. Any zoom enlargement is digital, which means you're simply narrowing the coverage of the image, rather than actually providing more resolution.

3. How are you going to get that image off your phone? Most phones don't provide any type of storage media, and of the rest, I'd say less than half provide any sort of connection cable to your PC. What does that leave? Airtime. Most mobile carriers will charge you to send the picture via e-mail to your own mail box. I'm happy to say this trend seems to be changing, but it's still prevalent.

4. These devices have limited storage capacity, often less than you'd find on a floppy disk. Some of the newer devices have more memory, but even they are severely limited so that you can only take and hold a few pictures before you're paying to send them somewhere, or deleting them.

5. This is a phone, not a camera, so the kind of aiming, image management, etc. you're used to in your digital camera isn't going to be available.

In the end, a camera is a camera and a phone is a phone. If you've just got to have a camera phone, go ahead, just don't expect it to work like your Nikon.