In Part One of this article, we took a look at the latest Palm OS smartphone offerings from Handspring, Kyocera, Samsung and Palm. In this part, PDAStreet covers what's happening with Microsoft and its partners, Symbian (Nokia & Sony Ericcson) Research In Motion and T-Mobile with its consumer orientated Sidekick.

Nokia Communicator

On the Symbian front, one of the first smartphones, the GSM Nokia Communicator ($599 with service), received a significant upgrade this year with the 9290. The Nokia Communicator has a very different design than the other devices mentioned in this article. It is more like a miniature laptop. In fact, like a laptop, it, unfortunately, does not have a touchscreen. When the phone is closed it looks like a large, 6.2 x 2.2 x 1-nch 8.6 ounce standard mobile phone. The keypad and a small LCD are on the top of the device. When the 9290 is opened, the large 640x200 pixel and a miniature full keyboard appear.

Nokia Communicator 9290

It has a 32-bit ARM9 RISC CPU, 56MB of RAM, and includes a 16MB MultiMediaCard. Users need to buy MP3 software separately. Cingular and T-Mobile support the Nokia Communicator. The device specs out at 600 minutes of talk time and up to 216 hours of standby time.

Sony Ericsson P800

A lighter more compact Symbian OS smartphone is slated to appear early in 2003 with service support from Cingular, the Sony Ericsson P800, a flip phone with a 4,096 color and 208 x 320 pixel touchscreen display that weighs 5.6 ounces. It includes 12MB of RAM, a built-in camera and GSM/GPRS support.

Sony Ericsson P800

Pocket PC Phone Edition & Windows Powered Smartphone

Microsoft's road into the smartphone market has been more rocky than Palm's or Symbian's. The company currently has two versions of its mobile operating system for these types of devices, Pocket PC Phone Edition and Windows Powered Smartphone. Pocket PC Phone Edition devices lean more towards the PDA side of the PDA/Phone hybrid, while Windows Powered Smartphone comes at the smartphone from the other side, phone first and PDA second.

Players in the Pocket PC phone market include Toshiba and its 2032SP and Audiovox' with its Thera PDA2032 (identical units), supported by Sprint and Verizon, as well as the latest Pocket PC/phone hybrid, T-Mobile's Pocket PC Phone.

Toshiba 2032SP

The $799 dual-band Toshiba/Audiovox supports the Sprint PCS and CDMA protocols, but doesn't run the Pocket PC Phone Edition OS. Rather it uses a phone application from Sierra Wireless. The device functions better as a PDA than a cellphone. Being a Pocket PC device, it has more powerful features than its Palm brethren, including a 206MHz Strong Arm processor, 32MB of RAM, 65,536 color display and an SD card slot. The rather large devices measures 5.0 x 3.0 x 0.8 inches and weighs 7 ounces. It specs out at a limited 90 minutes of talk time and a mere 8 hours standby time.

Like the Toshiba/Audiovox smartphones, the GSM T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition smartphone is more of a PDA than a phone. However, the $550 T-Mobile is a sleeker device, as it is built by the same company,High Tech Computer (HTC) of Taiwan, that makes Hewlett-Packard's renowned iPAQ. Like the other Pocket PC phones, it is rather large, at 5.0 x 2.8 x0.7-inches and 6.8 ounces and doesn't support a real keypad, but a virtual one on the screen's display. It has a 320 x 240 pixel screen at 4,096 colors, a 206MHz StrongARM processor, 32MB of RAM, and an SD card slot. This GSM Pocket PC phone is also sold in the U.S. by AT&T Wireless as the Siemens SX56. T-Mobile but adds GPS capabilities.

HTC recently received approval from the FCC to sell a new Pocket PC Phone code-named Falcon. The dual-band Falcon, which runs on CDMA networks, is similar the AT&T Wireless and T-Mobile devices, but adds GPS capabilities.

T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition

Windows Powered Smartphone

The Windows Powered Smartphone OS supporst much smaller handsets than the Pocket PC phones. Both platforms are based on Windows CE 3.0, but while the Pocket PC phones were designed as PDA solutions, the smartphone OS was designed from the ground up as a mobile phone. It is designed to compete with a company like Symbian, whose OS is in the lion's share of mobile phones.

Only one company has made a Windows Powered Smartphone so far, French-owned operator Orange SA, which is selling its Windows Powered Smartphone in the United Kingdom. Orange's SPV (sound, pictures, video), which is manufactured by Taiwan's High Tech Computer, costs 179 pounds ($276.8). The device, launched along with the Windows Powered Smartphone OS back in October, looks just like any other mobile phone with an actual keypad, but with a slightly larger 65,000 color, 176 x 220 display. It has 132MHz processor and 16MB of RAM and promises 2.5 hours standby and 100 hours of talk time. It can also run many of the Pocket PC/ Windows CE applications currently available. In the United States, AT&T Wireless announced plans to bring Windows Powered smartphone-based handsets to market by the middle of next year.

Orange SPV Windows Powered Smartphone

Nextel BlackBerry 6510

Research In Motion recently introduced the BlackBerry 6510, a new data and voice-enabled BlackBerry Wireless Handheld for Nextel. The Java-based BlackBerry 6510, which also recently began shipping, delivers email, a digital cellular phone, walkie-talkie, Web and organizer applications.

RIM said the BlackBerry 6510 also handles open standards and incorporates Java 2 Micro Edition , providing the ability to support a variety of applications targeted to vertical market segments, including financial, government, distribution, professional services, real estate, field sales and service, construction and manufacturing.

BlackBerry 6510

The BlackBerry 6510 measures 4.4 x 2.9 x 0.94-inches and weighs 5.8 ounces. The handheld features RIM's thumb-typing keyboard design, navigation trackwheel, dedicated Direct Connect button, embedded RIM wireless modem, rechargeable/removable lithium battery, integrated speaker/microphone and headset jack. Both the screen and keyboard are backlit.

The most exciting feature of the BlackBerry 6510 is that it provides Direct Connect, Nextel's long-range digital walkie-talkie feature that lets users communicate at the push of a button. The BlackBerry 6510 is the first BlackBerry Wireless Handheld to incorporate digital walkie-talkie services. The BlackBerry 6510 operates on the Nextel network, a nationwide all-digital packet data network. Nextel said it currently has coverage in 197 of the top 200 metropolitan areas.

T-Mobile Sidekick

At the other end of the smartphone spectrum is T-Mobile's Sidekick (built and designed by Danger and its hiptop Wireless Solution), a 6.2 ounces wireless device that is aimed squarely at the consumer market. The T-Mobile Sidekick allows users to surf the Web, send and receive email, chat using AOL Instant Messenger service, play games, take and email mobile snapshots and talk on the phone with an external headset, among other more standard PDA functions, such as a calendar and a note taking application.

According to T-Mobile, Sidekick users can send and receive email and attachments from up to three POP3 email accounts. It features a 2.6-inch 240 x 160 pixel backlit monochrome screen, a full HTML browser, and a clickable scroll wheel for browsing. The monochrome screen swivels up to a QWERTY keyboard. It is fully integrated with a version of AOL's Instant Messenger service, allowing users to keep instant messaging active in the background while surfing the web. It also includes custom ring tones, blinking lights and caller ID icons.

T-Mobile Sidekick

The T-Mobile Sidekick retails for $199 after a $50 rebate. The introductory price plan of $39.99 a month gives users unlimited data usage -- all the Web surfing, email, and AIM service they want for one year -- plus 200 anytime voice minutes and 1,000 weekend minutes, with free long distance. Thee Sidekick operates on T-Mobile's GSM/GPRS network.