There’s a couple of new QWERTY-keyboard equipped PocketPC-based mobiles out in the market (or will be soon).

The “Orange SPV M2000″:http://shop.orange.co.uk/shop/show/handset/spv_m2000/detail has pretty much everything… WiFi, Bluetooth and a side-out QWERTY keyboard. Unfortunately, it’s not as small as the “HTC Magician”:http://www.zoinger.com/archives/2005/02/15/13.23.48/. Since this is an Orange phone, it’s only available in Europe (or maybe you’ll be able to gray market it someday from sites like “this”:http://www.dweiniger.com/).

HP’s iPaq Mobile Messenger “h6500″:http://www.msmobiles.com/news.php/3587.html is due out in April. It’s got an integrated QWERTY keyboard similar to the Treo. It trades built-in WiFi for GPS which seems like an odd trade off to me. However, you will be able to add a WiFi card through the SD/IO slot (it as another slot for miniSD), and you’ll have the benefit of being able to break the antenna end of the card off. Add-in WiFi-card solutions suck… like so 1999. Additionally, the screen is fairly low resolution at 240×240. It’s mostly smaller than the M2000, but not close to the Magician.

table{width:400px}=. |Product|Length|Width|Thickness|
|M2000|4.92″|3.00″|0.74″|
|h6500|4.65″|2.80″|0.83″|
|Magician|4.25″|2.28″|0.71″|
|Audiovox SMT5600*|4.25″|1.81″|0.63″|
|Treo**|4.40″|2.30″|0.90″|
|*MS SmartPhone|
|**Dimensions not including external antenna|

I’m still waiting for a PocketPC mobile the size of the Magician that has a built-in QWERTY keyboard, WiFi and Bluetooth. GPS is highly optional for me.

_*Update: 2005_04_05*_
To partially solve the problem of SD WiFi cards sticking out of the slot, “here’s”:http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000273038793/ a stubby one from Spectec.

Check out Russell Beattie’s “post”:http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008387.html reviewing the PSP’s XMB (”xross media bar”) UI.

Sony has plans to use XMB across their line of consumer electronics products (such as some of their newer “TVs”:http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/200408/04-043E/) to hopefully create differentiation and hence product margin improvement in an increasingly hyper-competitive consumer electronics market. Can you imagine trying to sell your products at BestBuy? Here’s a row of _20_ LCD TVs which all look pretty much the same. Take your pick… as the eye searches to find the cheapest one.

However, buy the Sony because it has XMB.

bq.. “XMB” (xross media bar) user interface system

To allow viewers to enjoy various content from various devices, Sony’s “XMB” user interface enables viewers to switch channels easily via easy-to-recognize icons and to select their favorite programs and inputs from DVD or digital video camera quickly.

First introduced in the popular PSX computer entertainment systems, it operates via the high-speed processing of CPU “Emotion Engine” and a drawing processor “Graphics Synthesizer.”

p. Or so says “Sony”:http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/200408/04-043E/. I guess lots of emotively synthesized buzzwords are worth paying more for? Anyway Russell thinks pretty highly of Sony’s XMB UI efforts.

bq.. Neat - I love that Sony really made an effort here to perfect this UI and didn’t just throw Yet Another UI out there. This is what separates companies like Apple and Sony from the iRivers and Creative’s out there. Yeah, a gadget is a gadget, but the other companies willingness to launch products with insanely user-hostile UIs really shows, especially when you compare it to something so well thought out as the XMB.

p. Be sure to check out Russell’s XMB demonstration “video”:http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/videos/pspxmboverview.3gp too. He did it on his “Nokia 6630″:http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,,58708,00.html (oh, and btw, why are all Nokia phones now too big and just plain _ugly_?). The video runs about a MB a minute — roughly that of a decent MP3 recording. Hum… 7 minutes of audio (good audio) and video (it looks sort of ok) for 7 MBs. Not bad for a BUP(Big Ugly Phone).

P.S. I figure that Sony is not doing a very good job of branding XMB. I search on “A9″:http://www.a9.com (which uses Google results) for “@XMB@”:http://a9.com/xmb, and I can’t find Sony anywhere in the top 10. “@Sony XMB@”:http://a9.com/sony%20xmb gives _slightly_ better results. Jeez, just try “@Microsoft Smartphone@”:http://a9.com/microsoft%20smartphone as a comparison. No wonder Sony needed a “new boss”:http://www.sony.com/SCA/bios/stringer.shtml.

“Starbucks”:http://www.starbucks.com is a lot like McDonald’s in that you trade quality for a consistent experience. That is, you’re not going to get great coffee at Starbucks, but you’re probably not going to get terrible coffee there either. Mediocrity for the masses.

One thing that isn’t mediocre about Starbucks is their queues — especially during the morning rush. I suspect that most Starbucks regulars go through the same ritual every morning. Get up, drive to Starbucks, see the queue streaming out the door, wait in the seemingly endless queue, get to the counter and explain in “excruciating detail”:http://www.simon.com/mall/event_details.aspx?ID=765&EID=24448 your custom drink order — the same damn order you give _every single day_. Of course, you have to repeat your order, because when you say “Venti, tipple, extra-foam latte,” the reply back is, “Would you like anything else with that short, no-whip mocha?” And to add insult to injury, you’re forced to shuffle to the back of the store where there is never enough room (in a scene straight out of a “Tokyo subway”:http://images.encarta.msn.com/xrefmedia/sharemed/targets/images/pho/t028/T028954A.jpg) only to wait in yet another seemingly endless queue to pick up your drink.

It doesn’t have to be like this. Wouldn’t it be nice if all you had to do was send your local Starbucks a SMS message, so that when you arrived your drink would be ready at the “regular’s counter?” No waiting to pay for your coffee either, since it’d be automagically deducted from your “Starbucks Card”:https://www.starbucks.com/card/default.asp account.

The SMS used to place your order could be generated via a form on Starbucks website. The form would generate an SMS that would encode your Starbucks Card number, your local store location and your drink order. Once the form was completed, a SMS message would be sent to your mobile that you’d save and forward back to Starbucks anytime you wanted your coffee.

Obviously, there are lots of ways you could improve this process flow, but regardless, the end result would be a lot less waiting around by Starbucks customers. Heck Starbucks could even do some cool promotions with the carriers who’d love for their customers to be sending more “SMS messages”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_message_service#Popularity.

“Tom’s Hardware”:http://www.tomshardware.com/ recently “reviewed”:http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/20050315/index.html placing “Skype”:http://www.skype.com calls through a WiFi-connected PocketPC PDA using a Bluetooth headset… I guess you’d call that mouthful of techno jargon cutting edge.

Skype offers a special “client”:http://www.skype.com/products/skype/pocketpc/ specifically designed for Microsoft’s PocketPC operating system. Most “high-end”:http://shopping.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=AuofreyHhpxGA0FHiaiv7w4bFt0A;_ylu=X3oDMTA4Mm84YjJyBHNlYwNzb3J0?p=pocket+pc+pda&did=&sp=pall&X=3 PocketPC devices now integrate both WiFi and Bluetooth support, so theoretically one should be able to complete a Skype call via a PDA completely wireless (i.e., using WiFi to connect the PocketPC to the internet _and_ a Bluetooth headset to connect the caller to the PDA). Indeed, Tom’s Hardware finds that this is the case.

bq.. Our Skype for Pocket PC operational trial revealed that a high-performing Pocket PC equipped with wireless functions can indeed be used as a device for Internet telephony. The voice quality obtainable is perfectly satisfactory for personal use, and the method offers the big advantage of the extremely low calling cost: frequent or long-distance callers will quickly notice the positive impact on their phone bills.

In a business environment, this solution is not yet mature, due to the limitations we described regarding voice quality for intercontinental calls, and the sometimes variable quality when calling fixed line and wireless numbers

p. The review also offers a lot of detail on how to set up your PDA to connect via WiFi and pairing the PDA with a Bluetooth headset.

Definitely a sign of telecommunications to come.

_*Update: 2005_03_22*_
Check out “The techADDICTION Show #3″:http://www.thepodcastnetwork.com/ta/2005/03/22/the-techaddiction-show-3/ for an audio demo (part of their podcast) of Skype on a Pocket PC with a Bluetooth headset.

From “this”:http://news.com.com/Razr+phone+boosts+Motorola+to+No.+2+sales+slot/2100-1039_3-5598432.html News.com article on Motorola’s recent success with the “Razor”:http://www.motorola.com/mdirect/hellomoto/experience/v3/flash/default.shtml:

bq. More than a million of the slim handsets have been sold.

But that’s not really the point. This is:

bq. Overall, 674 million cell phones were sold worldwide in 2004, a 30 percent increase from the year before. Gartner credited the increase in part to emerging cell phone markets in Latin America. Growth is expected to remain robust in 2005, with Gartner predicting 730 million cell phone sales.

_730 MILLON_ phones. That’s just a damn big lot of anything. All I have to say about that is this (well actually, it’s not me, it’s the “Economist”:http://www.economist.com/surveys/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=246152):

bq. In the early 1980s AT&T asked McKinsey to estimate how many cellular phones would be in use in the world at the turn of the century. The consultancy noted all the problems with the new devices—the handsets were absurdly heavy, the batteries kept running out, the coverage was patchy and the cost per minute was exorbitant—and concluded that the total market would be about 900,000. At the time this persuaded AT&T to pull out of the market, although it changed its mind later.