Teach Your Old Cell Phone New Tricks

By Zukowski, Paul

Got iPhone envy? Many people are drooling over the cool features this souped-up – and expensive – cell phone provides. Even a BlackBerry might seem stodgy by comparison.

But to get cool features, you don’t necessarily have to cancel your current cell contract, pay an early termination fee, and buy a pricey new phone. Your present phone or BlackBerry may be capable of learning some new tricks.

To start with, have you explored all the options that are on your present cell phone? You may be in for a pleasant surprise to find your cell can already access the Internet, though perhaps in a limited capacity. This also costs extra, as do specialized services some cell phone companies offer, such as sports feeds. But you may find it is worth the $5 or $10 a month to subscribe.

For lighter information users, "mobile widgets" might suffice. A widget is a mini-application that does a specific task, such as access the weather, deliver news feeds, or send stock prices. You download mobile widgets to your cell phone, much like downloading ring tones. (There are also widgets for the computer, but that’s another story.)

Mobile widgets are free and the data comes to your phone as a text message or data feed, not as an Internet message. So you don’t have to activate a Web subscription to use widgets, although you do need Internet access to download them. (More on that later.)

With a few mobile widgets on your phone, on your next business trip you could get quick information on the nearest cheap gas, coffee shop, or restaurant. There are also widgets for displaying maps, showing an appointment calendar, or accessing the online encyclopedia called Wikipedia. You can even get a widget to help you find the nearest Wi-fi site so you can use your laptop.

The beauty of getting this type of information over your handset instead of your computer is obvious. It goes nearly anywhere, works in a flash, and you don’t need to log in. In fact, many of the feeds will automatically come to your phone and beep that you have a message.

If your interest is aroused, let’s hope your phone is capable of using and displaying widgets. The capability it needs is to run Java, a programming language commonly used on the Web. It’s unlikely your phone’s handbook even mentions this, but each of the free widget Web sites below has a list of compatible phones:

* GetMobio.com is a simple and easy to understand site and offers a dozen widgets, including a news feed, weather, a restaurant locator, and a cheap gas guide. My phone only supported the "lite" version, but it did display cheap gas in my area.

* Plusmo.com is a promising site offering more than 20,000 widgets and a way to write your own. It wouldn’t communicate with my Verizon phone,

but says it works with many others, including the iPhone.

* WidSets.com features a growing list of widgets that numbered over 3,500 in December. It also works with 300 models of cell phones unfortunately, not mine.

As I mentioned earlier, your phone has to have access to the Internet to download these widgets, but then you don’t need the Internet to run them. My plan offered one day of Internet access for a dollar, so I experimented with that, clicking on links sent to my phone as a text message after I registered online.

Check your cell phone plan for the cost of texting and data transfer. Running widgets every day will add up on some plans. My plan, for example, charges 10 cents a text message and 25 cents for an image.

Here’s hoping your old cell phone can learn how to get a map or find a good restaurant on your next business trip.