By Lou Dolinar
Updated Feb. 14, 2006

Have you noticed that your cell phone is getting to be more like a computer?

I’m not talking about those fancy $500 PDA-like units for nerdy businessmen, but rather the latest crop of entry level models targeted at teens, housewives and other normal people.

I usually replace my cell phone around the holidays, and the first time I noticed its computer-like behavior was when my Motorola T720 crashed, and then was rather easily repaired by removing and reinserting the battery, e.g. rebooting it. Since then, is has become my favorite piece of technology, despite massive shortcomings in reliability and software.

Why so useful? My year-old T720 is the first phone I’ve owned that allows me to easily store several hundred phone numbers. It is also fairly trivial to input those numbers, since I can plug the phone into my PC with a special USB cable, then use specialized software to enter and download the numbers.

As an added bonus, I can store a copy of those numbers on the PC, and back them up to my web account at Yahoo. Most entry-level cell phones are similarly equipped today. With a little practice, you can use these cell phones like Internet email: Any time you dial a number, any time you receive a phone call with ANI (automatic number identification) you can save that number to the phone directory. Add a couple of initials so you can remember who called, then input the full name next time you plug into the PC. (this is the second most useful thing you can know about cell phone; the most useful is how to update the PRL (preferred roaming list) via a number unique to each service.
Relying on numbers that you store on a cell phone can be a perilous practice if you can’t back up to a PC, since you invariably will drop the phone and watch your phone-life go poof. With backup, however, the phone becomes the logical center for organizing your phone numbers. In fact, you may, as I have, find that once your phone list is perfected, it more convenient to give up your landline and use the cell phone exclusively.

I’m not thrilled with any of the software I’m seen that works with my phone. In fact, I haven't seen software this bad since the Coleco Adam. Certain basic features, such as separate fields for first and last name, are often missing. Still, I put up with it because a phone directory integrated with a phone’s is so darn useful.

The brand I started with is SnapSync, from a company called Future Dial (www.futuredial.com). SnapSync’s great advantage is that it is available at Radio Shack and CompUSA, as well as the company’s web site, along with the unique USB cable you’ll need for your particular brand of phone.

The software plus cable costs $39 and the cable is available separately for $29. It supports many of the phones Radio Shack carries, but if you’re buying a new unit there, be sure it works with SnapSync.

In use, the program is simple. You install a unique software driver on the PC for your phone, plug in the unique USB cable to the phone and PC, and load the SnapSync software. If all goes well, you’re presented on the PC with a list of phone numbers and names that are loaded on the phone, which you can edit or add to, then dump back to the phone. You can also read a file from several versions of Outlook (but not Outlook Express) download it or upload entries from the phone to Outlook. Of course you can download a directory to several phones, just the ticket for the three-phone family like mine. Or you can move your directory to a new phone when you upgrade.

The whole operation is pretty crude if you’re accustomed to using a PDA, particularly if your phone has a cheezy connector that doesn’t always connect. Wiggle it a few times and it will probably work.

But that’s not the biggest irritation. The biggest annoyance here is that you can’t read the file on the PC unless you have connected the phone. The software just won’t load, and it stores your data in a proprietary format So unless you shell out another $100 for the latest version out Outlook, you’re Out of Luck.

SnapSync works well enough, but I decided to try my carrier’s official solution, Quicklink, available for $29.95 to download online from Smith Micro at http://store.smithmicro.com. A compatible cable is another $29.95. If you’re the impatient type, you probably can use a SnapSync cable from Radio Shack, as I did my Motorola phone, but I’m not making any promises for other brands. Smith Micro specifically warns against other cable brands. Quicklink has few features, but compared to the competition, one’s a real barn burner--you can read the database without having the phone connected and without owning a copy of Outlook. Wow! In CSV (comma separated variable) format, no less, so any old program will read the files directly, and you can distribute your phone book to every PC on your home network. Quicklink also works with Macs, and over Bluetooth wireless connections.

Unfortunately, neither of these programs offer true synchronization that PDA users are accustomed to, including an audit trail on which entries were created when and on which device. For that, you’ll have to go back to another product that only can be read via Outlook. That’s Intellisync, ($34.95) a PDA synchronization software from Pumatech (www.pumatech.com) that’s been adapted to a handful of cell phones. Assuming you have Outlook, it is the closest thing we’ve found to a universal phone contact synchronization sytem, since it works on phones, PDAs, PCs, There are even so-called enterprise solutions for big companies and a free version that lets you sync with the Yahoo phone directory.

A fourth program, DataPilot, (www.datapilot.com/) is a recent discovery and my current favorite. Of the various packages I’ve seen, it is most suitable for home users, and at a reasonable price: $79.95 gets you a phonebook manager, ringtone composer, image editor, Internet data modem, and calendar. The latter isn’t included in the currently shipping CD, but can be downloaded, with some trouble, from the company’s web site, and makes it simple to program events into your cell phone’s rudimentary calendar function.

The phone directory addresses one major problem with other packages we looked at, namely, it supports Outlook Express as well as Microsoft Outlook. And since adaptors for dozens of phones are included, it may be just the ticket for the multi-phone family. About the only thing missing is PDA style data synchronization; for that you might want to take a look at Pumatech’s Intellisync.

Still, products like these have a long way to go before they’ll match the flexibility of PDAs, according to Andrew Hogg, Senior Product Manager at Pumatech. Although most phones have some ability to keep track of appointments, you won’t find software that lets you manipulate this information from your PC. Rudimentary sorting, where, say, you separate out business from personal contacts, is cumbersome if available at all.

The basic problem, Hogg says, is a lack of standards: “The market has a lot of maturing to do. There's no way a single company can profitably keep up with the number of mobile phone companies and brands of phones.” In effect, every phone has a different operating system and interface standard. For the 19 models of phones his company has written software for, there are six totally different USB cables. Cheap, more capable phones will be here soon, but for the time being, if you want a full-featured PIM, you need to buy a hybrid device that combines a Palm-style PDA with a phone.

One last note: Verizon (and presumably other providers) recently began offering an online service for five bucks a months that lets you keep phone numbers and calendar entries online, via a web page, and download them directly to your phone, or back up your phone to the web. This should be free, of course.

Since you bought a cable to link your phone and PC, you also can add software that performs another neat trick, linking your computer to the Internet via the cellular network--for free in some cases.

Well, sort of. A couple of years back some of the cell phone companies though they could pump up demand by offering rudimentary Internet service. At roughly15 KBPS (yeah, right, about a quarter the speed of a dial-up modem) and the usual per minute charges, this was one of worst deals on data ever, and people stayed away from it in droves.

Fast forward two years. The cell-phone companies are competing mightily. New plans mean it basically doesn’t cost anything to yak on weekends and evening.

Or, for that matter, to use some carrier’s cell phones to connect to the Internet. What used to be a terrible deal for the target market of businesspeople is now a pretty good deal for normal people like me who travel on weekends to visit relatives, or got to swim meets soccer and lacrosse tournaments and want to compute on the go or from the stands. Verizon and Sprint both have this slow-speed service, and what particularly neat is that it is a genuine Internet connection, just like DSL or cable. In other words, you don’t need to hook in via an ISP, which means you don’t need an auxiliary dial-up account for $15 or so a month in addition to home broadband. (There are also a fair number of faster, paid services for cell phones, which we’ll cover in a future column.)

Your phone has to support data services, and not all do. But with my Morotorola T720, which is an entry level phone from Verizon, I easily connected via the company’s “circuit switched” 2G network via several popular products, including Future Dial’s Snapdial, (www.futuredial.com), Smith Micro‘s Quicklink (http://store.smithmicro.com, which is Verizon's official solution) and Susteen Software’s Datapilot (www.datapilot.com). These programs should also work with Verizon’s newer 3G protocols, about ten time faster, but for which you’ll pay an addional fee.

The theoretical speed of these links is 19.2 KBPS, I averaged around 15. While this may sound dismal, it is adequate for downloading email, browsing text, and simple chores like web-based banking. You can forget about graphics and video. Indeed, the simplest way to improve performance is to turn off graphics in your browser: uncheck “show pictures” under Tools/Internet Options/Advanced.

One last trick for the USB cable: In some cases, you may be able to charge your phone via your laptop with it.

Speaking of things that act like computers but aren’t, my electric blanket crashed last week. How do I know? Because it worked again when I rebooted it.

My wife, Linda, bought the Sunbeam smart blankie a couple of months ago. Pretty neat, actually. The main feature that distinguishes it from normal uncomplicated electric blankets: dual wireless remote controls. It also has features, the main one being a timer that shuts its off automatically after ten hours, and a “preheat” setting that sets power on maximum for about ten minutes to make sure the bed is toasty warm. It also can adjust itself to room temperate and body temperature. Anyone think there‘s a microprocessor and a few lines of code in there?

I turned on the blankie before I retired. When I crawled into bed, it was still ice cold.

Checked the remotes. Both indicated the blankie was on, and that it was preheating nicely, even though there was no heat. Checked the power attachments. Everything connected properly. I’d thrown out the docs, I mean, when was the last time you needed docs for an electric blanket?

As I traced out the wiring, I noticed that the blanket end had what looked like a receiver module. This I hadn’t noticed previously because Linda had installed the blankie and tucked the receiver under the bed. The receiver had two lights, both of which were flashing red.

That sure didn’t look right. I unplugged the blanket, to try for a system reset, and just for fun I pulled the batteries out of the (ergonomic!) remote controls. Put ’em back, plugged it in, and was rewarded with green lights and a warm blankie. Perusing the Sunbeam’s excellent blanket support page later that night, I discovered that this was indeed the correct way to reboot the blanket, along with other useful technical information such as how to change its frequency if other wireless gizmos interfere. Alas, no patches available for my stability problem.

I’m still trying to find out how much memory and what processor and whether my 802.11b network tripped it up. Ten bucks says it has more computational horsepower than the original Macintosh, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this week.

Meanwhile, I discovered another feature last night: My controller can override my wife’s remote control when I set my control to operate “both sides of bed.” In other words, like any good computer, my smart blankie can be hacked.