Working Through Your Pocket

The country manager of a leading networking equipment vendor in India always

had a difficult time at home: he spent too much of his time at home answering

official mails and was left with little time for his family. But that was some

time back. Thanks to Blackberry, he now spends less time answering mails in

front of his wife, though he still continues to answer them from home. The big

difference is that now he does so sitting in the toilet!

Even though corporate users have been using Blackberry in India for over a

year, it was Airtel that officially introduced the palm-sized Blackberry in the

country recently. The device, hugely popular as an email device in the US, works

on GPRS and is really user friendly when it comes to sending and receiving

emails on the move, even those with heavy attachments. Blackberry also has a

user-friendly web browser. It can also double up as a normal mobile phone that

can make voice calls.

Blackberry: It seamlessly integrates with the user business email system (Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Domino). With the Blackberry's own Integrated Attachment Solution, users can read attachments of many formats like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, WordPerfect and PDF. User can also access internet-based emails (POP3/IMAP4 ISP email accounts, Indiatimes, Rediffmail etc.) Nokia 6670: Apart from excellent imaging features, it also offers document viewers for reading email attachments, powerful personal information management (PIM) features, web browser with support for PDF files, and faster data input with the Nokia Wireless Keyboard. Besides, users can print their emails or images directly from the handset via Bluetooth wireless technology. It allows for quick and convenient capturing, printing, storing and sending of mega pixel-quality images as well as video. Its photo editor application makes possible enhancing of images instantly on the phone screen with crop, frame, auto fix, and text-adding features. The phone also offers enhanced security for professionals on the go; the phone is the first Series 60 product to support mobile anti-virus software developed by F-Secure. Krome iQ 700: Positioned by the vendor as something like a "Windows PC hidden in a mobile device," the world's "smallest Microsoft Windows enabled device" Krome iQ 700 smart phone actually resembles a PC in the hand. Apart from the camera, email, web browsing and document viewing features, it also comes loaded with the msn messenger. Motorola A768i: Besides the usual e-mail and web browsing features, Motorola A768i's Picsel browser is an interesting and useful application. Apart from html pages, the Picsel browser is also capable of viewing MS Office documents, PDF files, and other document formats. This makes the phone good for mobile document browsing.

Indian mobile users, especially professionals and corporates, never had it so

good. As India's mobile subscriber base zoomed, a slew of handset and other

mobile devices makers began to flood the market. While PDAs, which also allowed

mobile email access and web browsing, never really picked up in India, smart

phones and devices like Blackberry are gaining acceptance: Smart phone users now

have access to voice and PDA functionalities in a single device, whether it's

the Blackberry or the Nokia 6670 or Motorola A768i. While most of these smart

phones come with a number of features and applications, what could be appealing

and useful for corporate users is email, web browsing and document viewing

features. Some of these phones, like the Nokia 6670, offer excellent imaging

features.

Ravi Shekhar Pandey in

New Delhi