This Smart Phone Still Has Rough Edges

Paul Masson used to say he’d sell no wine before its time.

Somebody should’ve given this advice to the makers of the first cell phone-organizer to incorporate Microsoft Corp.’s Pocket PC 2002 Phone Edition.

Like a burgundy opened before its rough edges have mellowed, this handset is too young for store shelves.

Too bad, because the T-Mobile Pocket PC phone--offered in the United States by VoiceStream Wireless--is a great idea.

With the kinks worked out, I’m sure it’ll make a fine, albeit expensive, choice for people like me who’d prefer to combine cell phone with personal organizer.

The $500 device contains the same features as the hand-held computers from Compaq or Toshiba, such as Microsoft’s Outlook personal organizer and e-mail software, along with other offerings including MSN Messenger, Windows Media Player, Word and Excel.

But the gadget also sports a stubby antenna poking out of one end, used by the cell phone, which integrates with Outlook’s contacts database.

That means that if you sync the device with your PC, not only do you get all your contacts’ phone numbers and e-mail addresses, but you also can use the device to call or send e-mail without having to punch keys on the color touch screen.

A few other “communicators” or “smart phones” already have emerged, the best-known being Handspring Inc.’s Treo, which runs the Palm operating system. Nokia, Audiovox Corp. and Kyocera Corp. also sell such devices.

The T-Mobile (named after the wireless brand of VoiceStream’s German parent Deutsche Telekom) is the first to hit the market that incorporates Microsoft’s Pocket PC Phone Edition operating system. The Thera, from Audiovox, uses a Pocket PC version not specifically designed for wireless communicators.

On the T-Mobile hand-held, the Internet Explorer browser that languishes unused on most Pocket PC devices comes into its own.

I sat on my deck and surfed the BBC’s Web site--the faster-loading text-only version--and was surprised at how quickly the stories popped up.

The phone also has SMS, or Short Message Service, which has been the rage in Europe for more than a year and is slowly catching on in the United States. It lets you fire off short messages to similarly equipped cell phones, even providing popular mobile phone one-liners such as “Where are you?”

Unfortunately for T-Mobile and Microsoft, the device failed to do these tasks about as often as it completed them.

The phone uses VoiceStream’s GSM service, which in New York, anyway, suffers from reliability problems. The browser relies on VoiceStream’s higher-speed GPRS network, theoretically able to download Web pages at a speed comparable to a home dial-up connection.

For me, only the BBC site operated smoothly. My connections to Yahoo, Hotmail, Salon.com and Amazon.com proved frustratingly slow.

Worse, it appears Microsoft hasn’t gotten the phone functions fully integrated with its Pocket PC software.

After a few days of testing, Outlook’s contacts database stopped working, blocking me from making calls or sending e-mail unless I could remember the number.

With so many features bundled into a gadget the size of a cigarette pack, I’m sure it’s an enormous task to get them all working in harmony. And the problems with the cellular and wireless connectivity can’t really be blamed on the device.

Still, I suspect many early buyers of the T-Mobile smart phone will treat it like a bottle of under-aged wine. They’ll send it back.