'Hey, Dude! Cool Handheld'

Designers of handheld devices for the new wave of speedier wireless-data

networks have looked to mobile executives as their primary market. And why not?

With handhelds such as the Handspring Treo 270 or BlackBerry 5810 costing

upwards of $500, plus $50 or more for monthly service, their appeal is mostly

limited to the expense-account set.

Danger, a Palo Alto startup, has a different idea. It designed the Hiptop

handheld to appeal mainly to the 18-to-34 age group–people who have grown up

with cell phones and instant messaging. In the process, Danger has come up with

a product that can teach a few things to those making handhelds for the

corporate set.

Danger’s

business plan is to license its design to others to manufacture and sell. The

first incarnation of the Hiptop, called Sidekick, will be marketed by T-Mobile

USA. It costs $199 after rebate, with activation. A monthly service plan, which

has tentatively been priced at $39.99, includes unlimited e-mail and 200 weekday

voice minutes. At such reasonable prices, Sidekick may have what it takes to

make the wireless handheld a true mass-market product.

The Hiptop is an extraordinarily clever design. It’s a little bulkier than

most handhelds, especially in its thickness of a bit over an inch, but the heft

is put to good use. Its key is a wheel that lets you choose among programs or

scroll through e-mail messages or Web pages. It even changes color to signal

incoming messages. All navigation is done with the wheel and three big buttons:

One takes you back one screen, another gives you a menu of options for your

current task, and the third offers the main menu of applications, which includes

phone, instant messaging, e-mail, Web browsing, contacts, calendar, and an

assortment of games.

The monochrome display boasts 50% higher resolution than a Palm and good

readability in most lighting conditions. A color screen would have been nice,

especially for viewing Web pages, but would have made it impossible to hit the

$200-price target.

When you tap the upper-right corner of the display, the entire screen rotates

180 degrees to reveal a nifty little keyboard. The design allows the keyboard to

be bigger, and thus easier to use, than those on the Treo or RIM BlackBerry. It

also is the only micro-keyboard that I’ve seen with a row of dedicated number

keys. I found I could bang out short e-mails or AOL instant messages with

impressive speed.

E-mail requires the use of a T-Mobile account. If you want to get mail from

an existing account, you will have to forward it to the Sidekick. That major

limitation aside, the e-mail program is one of the best I’ve seen on a

handheld. As you start to type an address, a list of possible names, pulled from

your address book, pops up for you to choose from. You can even display some

common attachments, including Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat. And Sidekick

uses T-Mobile’s new GPRS data network to deliver mail to the handheld as soon

as it arrives at the server.

The address book and calendar functions work well, but they’re limited by

the inability to sync data with a PC. You can export data from most desktop

information managers and upload it to a Web site, from which it is automatically

copied to the Sidekick. Data on the Sidekick and the private Web page are kept

in sync, but changes don’t flow back to your PC.

The Sidekick is weakest when functioning as a phone. It’s somewhat awkward

to hold up to your face, handset style, but it does have a jack for a standard

headset. Dialing using the address book is simple, but there’s neither a dial

pad nor a touch screen. Instead, you use an on-screen dial pad and select

numbers with the scroll wheel, which I found clumsy to use.

The limitations of the phone aside, I think the Sidekick is an outstanding

first effort from a new company. The makers of more corporate-oriented gadgets–even

the best-of-breed Treo–ought to study it. And with a little software

modification, specifically desktop-contact, calendar sync, and a way to handle

corporate e-mail, the Hiptop could appeal to mobile executives, too.

By Stephen H Wildstrom

in BusinessWeek. Copyright 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc