That third screen--in your pocket! Think it's just a cell phone? Sure, you can make a call, but there's so much more in store.

They've got keyboards and web browsers, sound cards and media players, operating systems and memory cards, but we never think of them as computers. Of course, I'm talking about our cell phones, the Swiss Army knives of the digital age. But precisely because we take cell phones so much for granted, it's good to assess where this so-called "third screen" (after television and computer screens) is headed. The future of communication seems to hinge on it.

Voice communications are going to play a very small part in the cell phone of the future. If you connect the dots between changes in the business of entertainment, news, text messaging, blogging, payment systems, search functions and e-commerce, you'll understand why the companies that offer these systems all want a piece of the action. Those that will deliver content to your phone and help you access and manage it on the fly are vying to control the chips on which these phones run, and that tiny piece of real estate we call a screen.

Cell phones today have ample memory to handle not only graphics-laden presentations, but also music, video and podcasts. Most pack up to a dozen applications, too, but how many of them do you use? Consider what your job description might be if you had a phone capable of shooting digital movies. A company video that you could edit on the run and beam up to a corporate web site (or a video news release sent off to a media company) could launch you into PR. How about a Google phone that would allow you to search a word or a trademark during a meeting? Or a phone like the LG VX-9800--which looks like a compressed laptop, complete with keyboard that makes blogging easy? Or one that allows you to create, store and beam PowerPoint presentations? We're not too far off. Blogger.com and TypePad allow you to update a blog via e-mail, a feature that I have occasionally used from my cell phone.

A quick look at some of the recent developments in cell phones will give you a sense of what's in store.

Cell phones as MP3 players

In quick succession, both Motorola and Sprint Nextel unveiled subscription music services that customers could use not on their computers but on their cell phones. Motorola's revamped ROKR MP3 phone will work with its own iRadio service--a departure from Apple's iTunes, which served its previous model. Sprint Nextel customers can purchase phones that allow them to download music from the Sprint Music Store. But competition is heating up. Amp'd Mobile is an entertainment company created for 3G (third-generation) mobile devices. Its web site features downloadable music in every genre. Saving music to the phone is easy via a detachable memory card or a USB connector. Among its features is a wireless browser allowing you to watch MTV cartoons and programs from NBC.

Phone flicks

The first-ever cell-phone film festival was held in 2004 by Zoie Films, a company known for showcasing Internet-developed films. Likewise, in 2003, Nokia created a competition called Nokia Shorts that called for entries for 15-second movies shot on digital cameras, to be played on cell phones. By 2005, recognizing that cell phones could shoot films with near-VHS resolution, Nokia opened up the competition to entries shot exclusively on cell phones. Finalists' entries were screened at the Raindance Film Festival.

Cell phones will soon come with the ability to record programs in TiVo (digital video recording, or DVR) style, for time shifting. Sharp has a phone with a video-recording function, and a service called DVReverywhere allows TiVo users to stream recorded programs to their phones. Apple's video iPod is at the front and center of the push to store and watch movies on a portable device. Should Apple come out with its own iPod cell phone, as many have predicted, the "movie phone" will be the one to watch.

Media on your phone

ABC News, CNN and Reuters have experimented with services that stream video directly to your PC. Your phone could be next in line. Newspapers have already gotten started. Late last year the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times and other U.S. newspapers took to podcasting, raising a lot of eyebrows as to what business a local newspaper had in experimenting with a "radio program." But podcasts, saved in the MP3 format, are easy to download to a phone. In Australia, mobile service provider Azure Wireless has a new wireless podcast network. Marketers, newspaper columnists, preachers and PR people who want to sidestep the official channels can now pipe their content to your phone.

Yahoo! has just launched Go Mobile, a way of funneling everything you get via the Yahoo! portal (e-mail, news, video, appointments, e-commerce, etc.) through your phone. To get people started, Yahoo! has persuaded Nokia to preinstall Go Mobile into some of its phones. Other hardware manufacturers and phone networks will probably join in, in the same way that manufacturers incorporated the Microsoft web browser into PCs. In the U.K., i-mode, a data service from carrier O2, turns the phone screen into a portal, with access to flight information, movies, music, banking, sports and more.

Wi-Fi phones

Hundreds of cities, airports, hotels and businesses are creating large Wi-Fi hotspots, and not just for those toting laptops. Cell phones with built-in Wi-Fi allow a user to route long-distance calls via the Internet instead of eating up valuable cell-phone minutes. Bluetooth, a short-range wireless standard, allows phones to connect with other devices within a few feet, but Wi-Fi allows the device in your hand to make giant strides, whether it's for tapping out e-mails on a bus or checking Mapquest for driving directions.

Your phone/wallet

A cell phone could easily replace a credit card, since it can encrypt personal and financial details far more efficiently than a magnetic strip. NTT DoCoMo of Japan has a wallet phone. The i-mode FeliCa service lets people use their phones, embedded with a special chip, as a credit card, key, even a contact-less prepaid train pass. Customers simply wave their phone in front of a special reader to pay for merchandise. A cell phone can be charged online, or even with cash. How? Special readers accept cash and load up the phone with e-cash!

So take your pick: music station, news channel, video panel or e-wallet. You probably never imagined what you were getting into when you bought that cell phone just to make a few phone calls!

It's for you

IPTV: Internet Protocol-based TV will make its appearance, bringing us video-on-demand TV accessible though our multimedia, widescreen cell phones.

EVDO: This is the long-awaited broadband wireless standard called Evolution Data Optimized that will allow you to stream data (music and video, for instance) to your cell phone at about 400 kilobits per second. This includes traditional TV programming. Sprint and Verizon offer versions of this in the U.S. Check it out at www.evdoinfo.com.

WiMax: It's another standard that is being established to make all wireless phones and devices interoperable. Members of the WiMax forum include Bell Canada, Samsung, Ericsson, Motorola and Time Warner Telecom. Find out more at www.wimaxforum.org.

lights ... cell phone ... action

In November 2005, the dean of the Park School of Communications at Ithaca College in New York announced a new contest open to high school and college students. The challenge? To produce a short movie created on a cell phone. It needed to be 30 seconds in length and shot entirely with the phone, though editing could be done on a PC.

worth a visit DVReverywhere www.orb.com/dvreverywhere Nokia Shorts www.nokiashorts.com iRadio broadband.motorola.com/iradio

Angelo Fernando is a freelance writer based in Tempe, Arizona, covering business, marketing, media and technology.