Best Business Phones

The main purpose of buying a phone is to make and receive phone calls. But for business professionals, especially those who are constantly on the move, a mobile phone has got to be more than a voice communications device.

Aaron Gray & CK Ng  

Many businessmen use their phones to send and retrieve data files, faxes and e-mails, as well as access the Internet. But it’s not just the interactivity that’s important. They also want to manage their personal information such as address book, scheduler and to-do lists.

Some of today’s best business phones have almost the same functionality as a laptop computer – except they actually fit into your pocket. Their purpose is no less than to increase your productivity when you’re outside the office.

The MW team has compiled a list of our favourite business phones: Nokia 9500, Sony Ericsson P910i, PalmOne Treo 650, O2 XDA II Mini and HP iPaq hw6515. It’s hard to rank which is better, so we won’t do that. Instead, to help you make an informed decision, we are highlighting some issues for you to consider when shopping for a businessphone.

Operating system
There are three main operating systems (OS) for business phones: Windows Mobile, Palm and Symbian. Linux also has a mobile version suitable for phones but it isn’t regarded as one of the preferred OS due to its relatively low market penetration and the lack of third party software.

Many major brands, such as HP and O2 have opted for Windows Mobile (Pocket PC). The advantage of Windows is that it offers familiarity to users, who probably have a Windows PC at work or at home. It also has a huge amount of third party software. The downside, however, is  its volatile memory where user data would be totally wiped out when the battery is fully drained.

Palm, a well-established PDA OS, has been around for quite time. As such, it has legions of fans who like its simplicity and user-friendliness. Many users believe that Palm has the upper hand when it comes to personal information management (PIM). “The Treo 650 has better features in the PIM department than any other PDA phones,” says Ng Cheng Ho, owner of INNO-PDA, a shop that specializes in PDAs and smartphones.

Although Symbian comes in different varieties, the ones more popular amongst business users  are the Symbian UIQ and the Series 80, used in the Sony Ericsson P910i and Nokia 9500 Communicator, respectively. The major advantage of Symbian is that it can run applications without draining the battery life too quickly. Symbian is generally considered to be less powerful than Windows and not as user-friendly as Palm, but it has survived challenges from its rivals and is still a very relevant OS that is used in many phones.

Productivity apps
Most businessmen want applications that can read and write MS Office files in Word, Excel and  owerPoint format. “A business phone capable of reading agreements, quotations, worksheets and even presentations is a much soughtafter device for professionals,” says Alston Eng, a salesman for Bluetoothnnovation, an outlet that sells mostly PDAs and Bluetooth accessories.

Ngan Yee Yan

The Sony Ericsson P910i also has a good application called QuickOffice which works well with those three MS Office applications. Both O2 XDA II Mini and HP hw6515 have built-in applications for reading MS Word and Excel, but you’ll have to install Documents To Go on the Treo 650 in order to view such files.

Li Shuan

In other words, she wants a PDA built into her phone. All the phones we picked have PDA like functions but the one that stands out in terms of user-friendliness is, of course, the Palm-based Treo 650. Palm, after all, launched the PDA fad several years ago.

Wireless capabilities
The prominent wireless technologies for business phones are Bluetooth, Infrared, GPRS, and EDGE but as the demand of highspeed data communication increases, more and more business phones are beginning to incorporate Wi-Fi as well. Though 3G is on the rise, it is still very new and is a topic for a future cover story. We will not cover it here.

Of the five phones, the one with the most wireless connectivity options would be the Nokia 9500 Communicator, as it offers Bluetooth, Infrared, GPRS and EDGE and Wi-Fi. In fact, it has every wireless technology you could possibly want except 3G.

Devices such as the O2 XDA II Mini, HP hw6515 and Treo 650 offer Wi-Fi connectivity through the use of third party accessories such as a SD Wi-Fi card. The phone with the least connectivity options would be the Sony Ericsson P910i, as it only offers Bluetooth, Infrared and GPRS.

Data communication
Data communication refers to the ability to send and receive MMS, e-mails and even faxes. All five phones are capable of handling such data communication functions, but only the Nokia 9500 Communicator has all of these built-in. The rest need third party software.

The Nokia 9500 is also the best choice for e-mail because of its many connectivity options, a large display, as well as its big QWERTY keyboard, which makes entering text relatively easy. It also handles faxes very efficiently, storing them as digital images.

According to Takacom’s Ngan Yee Yan, the Nokia 9500 is “consistently the top choice for those looking for data communications”.

Internet access
Although all five of the selected phones are capable of browsing the Internet, each of the devices runs on different browsers. Window Mobile incorporates the familiar Internet Explorer (IE) browser.

Palm offers Blazer as its pre-loaded browser, but due to a smaller screen display on Palm devices, such as the Treo 650, browsing the Net can become a bothersome experience. While some Symbian devices such as the Sony Ericsson P910i have built-in browsers, users often adopt third party browsers such as Opera.

The Nokia 9500 has Opera built in, and it’s without question the best phone for browsing, not just because its big screen, but also for its wide range of connectivity options, including Wi-Fi and EDGE.

Input options
The more input options a business phone has, the better it is, as this allows users to key in information faster than they could do with a simple keypad, especially for note-taking and composing e-mails or faxes.

The types of input methods come in both physical and virtual form nowadays. Besides the standard numerical keypad, there’s the QWERTY keyboard, handwriting recognition and virtual keyboard.

Among the five phones, only Sony Ericsson P910i has all the input methods mentioned above; with the distinctiveness of housing both numerical buttons and a QWERTY keyboard on the same keypad flip (one on each side).

Memory
The amount of memory offered for data storage in business phones is usually much higher than in normal phones. Of the five phones, the Nokia 9500 has the most built-in memory of 80MB. The Treo 650, meanwhile, has the lowest, with 22 MB only.

Business phones usually have memory card slots to further expand storage capacity. With memory cards, data transfer is also easy. The capacity of memory cards can range from 32MB all the way up to 2GB, and different phonessupport different types of cards.

Alex Goh, s sales executive at the Henvinton Mobile PDA shop, says memory card slot expansion is important as this allows businessmen to save any important data from the e-mails or attachments onto the cards in case the phone battery dies.

Secure Digital (SD) cards are the most supported type, adopted by O2, HP and Treo. Multi Media Card (MMC) is generally used in older generation devices, but it still runs on certain SD card-enabled devices, such as Nokia 9500, due to its similar design, capacity and size. Sony Ericsson uses a proprietary format called Memory Stick which has a capacity of up to 128 MB for the Duo version and up to 2GB for the Pro Duo.

Ng Cheng Ho

“If businessmen want a PDA phone, they have to think very carefully about the phone they choose as battery life is an important consideration,” says INNO-PDA’s Ng. A person who constantly receives calls on an XDA II Mini may run out of battery within half a day, whereas a Treo 650 or a Sony Ericsson P910i has a better battery life that lasts longer for phone usage,” he adds.

Form factor
Do businessmen care about how their device looks or how bulky it is? Of course to a certain extent, yes, but looks are not a major consideration. Functionality is.

“A device that allows me to send SMSes in bulk as well as having features like photo album, PDF/MS Office reader, Bluetooth, multimedia playback, GPRS, e-mail and a large phonebook is what I’m looking for,” says Alex Au-Yong, an art director.“I don’t go for devices that feel like a status or fashion statement.”

Still, for those who prefer their phones to be fashionably small, they can go for the O2 XDA II Mini or the HP hw6515. For those who want great functionality but don’t mind carrying a brick around, the Nokia 9500 is the one to go for.

Does price matter?
Functionality comes at a price. Businessmen understand that and they are generally willing to pay a higher price to get the functionalities they want.

Beh Chin Kiat

The Nokia 9500 is the most expensive of the phones we’ve picked. The least expensive is the Sony Ericsson P910i, which is not to say it’s cheap. All business phones will set you back by more than RM2000.

Bottom line
So many phones, so many choices. It’s not easy to decide which phone to get. Well, ask yourself: Do you prefer a Symbian, Palm or Windows version? Is size a major factor? Which types of wireless data access is important to you? These are the kinds of questions you should be asking yourself.

Actually any one of the phones we’ve picked would be a good buy if you’re looking for a business phone.

Ultimately, it’s about individual preferences.

Hopefully, this guide that we’ve prepared for you is useful in helping you make an informed decision the next time you go business phone shopping.

Note that in looking at business phones, we’ve purposely avoided including 3G phones as 3G is still new.

Besides, 3G phones – though they can certainly function as business phones – are really a category into themselves. (Don’t worry, we’ll devote a future cover story to them).