Small Talk

Once, cellular phones were impractical if you wanted to stay in touch with a far-flung workforce. But roaming rates are down and functionality is up. Consider these:

Two phones, Bell Mobility’s StarTac and the Motorola Timeport from Clearnet, share a common form factor-that is, a small physical size and shape. The differences are in color (the StarTac is available only in textured black, while the Timeport comes in a flashy smooth silver finish), and in some details with the case and keypad.

Both the StarTac and the Timeport are CDMA phones. They adhere to the Code Division Multiple Access standard, one of the two most common cellular technologies in North America. (The other is TDMA, which stands for Time Division Multiple Access.) CDMA is a wideband spread-spectrum technique that converts analog signals into digital for transmission over a cellular network. The fact that CDMA is a North American standard is worth noting: a CDMA cell phone won’t work in Europe or most of Asia.

Where the StarTac and the Timeport stand out from the crowd is in their excellent audio quality, which is important if you’re talking from a worksite or truck cab.

If size matters most, consider the Nokia 8890, available from Fido. The phone is a GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) phone, a standard adopted by more than 60 countries. Like other high-end cellular phones, the 8890 offers such features as voice dialing (saves time and some frustration, but requires some initial setup), animated menu icons, and bright blue keypad, which make sit easy to use in the dark. The 8890 has a 100-number phone book on the phone’s SIM (Subscriber Identity Module, the card that keeps track of the user’s phone number, subscriber services, and phone book data), and 250 entries internally. A minor drawback is that only one number per name is permitted, limiting the total to 350 numbers: this can be a real issue for keeping track of business contacts.

A really handy feature on the 8890 is the IR port, which allows you to connect the phone to your computer without wires, for enabling wireless e-mail.