The Kansas City Star, Mo., David Hayes Column: The UpStage is Cool but Frustrating
By David Hayes, The Kansas City Star, Mo.
Apr. 1–At just a hair over 2.5 ounces, this bit of plastic and metal is pretty impressive.
Not much bigger than an Apple Nano, the Sprint UpStage crams a lot of functions into a phone/kitchen sink device so small that it is barely noticeable in a shirt pocket and could get lost in a purse.
It’s a digital music player, a camera, a camcorder. It can connect to Sprint TV and radio services, act as a photo viewer and tap into and play podcasts from NPR and others. It has a calendar, alarm, stopwatch. It can double as a modem to get your notebook computer online. It has voice-activated dialing — say “call 816-234-4904″ — and it does.
Yes, it’s also a phone.
Sprint is hoping the UpStage will do for music what the company’s Sanyo 8100 camera phone did for mobile picture taking about four years ago — get people used to the idea at a budget price.
Sprint is pricing the UpStart at a bargain $149, about the same price as a 2-gigabyte Nano.
The pricing difference comes in memory and capabilities. The UpStart’s primary storage is done with miniSD cards, and the 64-megabyte card included with the phone just doesn’t cut it. A 2-gigabyte miniSD card, however, costs less than $40.
On the other hand, the Nano isn’t a phone, can’t connect to the Internet and won’t send text messages.
So, this is a killer device, and a geek wannabe like me just has to have one, right?
Umm, maybe not.
Though the UpStage is a cool piece of gear, it has some hang-ups.
One of the most significant actually has to do with one of the phone’s most innovative features — it is two-sided, with a small screen on the phone side and a larger screen on the digital music player/Internet browsing side. Users hit a button to “flip” from one side to the other.
That feature is awkward, especially when you are typing something on the phone side that displays on the music side — creating a music playlist, searching for a song or keying in a Web address. Hit a button, flip, type in the address, hit a button, flip.
The device is also awkward for text messaging. The text-messaging screen is large enough for only three lines of text, scrolling up as users type out a message. More awkward, though, is that text messages received by the phone show up on the music side of the phone.
Want to respond? Flip.
That leads to the phone’s other significant hang-up. Samsung uses a pressure-sensitive touchpad to control the digital music player side of the phone. Unlike the more common scroll-wheel controls, users drag a finger down the pad, much like using a touchpad on a laptop computer.
The touchpad is alternatively either too sensitive or not sensitive enough.
All that aside, as a music player the UpStart sounds better than any other phone/music player I’ve tried.
It also supports Bluetooth, meaning users can listen with wireless stereo headphones. If someone calls while you’re jamming, the number pops up, giving you the option to take the call — or not.
So, phones — now more computer than handset — take another step.
Expect more in the months to come, as the industry gears up for the highly overpriced and still untested Apple iPhone, which won’t be available until June ($499 and $599).
There’s more coming
It’s still up in the air whether consumers really want music or TV on their mobile phones, but AT&T is getting ready to push the envelope even further.
This summer, the former Cingular Wireless plans to offer a service that lets subscribers stream live video from one cell phone to another while they talk.
Like everything with new advanced services, there are some caveats: It works only in areas where AT&T has built out its high-speed 3G network, and it requires both parties to have a Video Share-equipped phone.
AT&T execs, who demonstrated Video Share at a trade show in Orlando, Fla., last week, think the service will attract parents wanting to show off their kids’ activities to relatives and friends, consumers looking for a second opinion on a purchase and real estate agents showing a house.
Another use? Callers can stream live video of themselves while they talk, AT&T said, and then reverse the video when they want to see the other person.
I am so not going to comment on that.
Garmin is ‘Wired’
If you’re a tech company, there’s one list it’s pretty cool to make — the Wired 40.
The list is compiled annually by Wired magazine, representing what the editors consider to be “the most innovative companies in the world.”
Despite having some tech heavyweights in town — think Sprint, Cerner, Freightquote and others — the Kansas City area has never broken into the list — until last week.
Garmin International of Olathe was cited by Wired, which noted that the manufacturer of navigation gear is moving GPS into all sorts of new directions.
Garmin made the list in the No. 22 spot, ahead of Amazon.com (No. 23) and well above household tech names like Microsoft, Intel and IBM.
“GPS technology has infiltrated cockpits, dashboards and handhelds,” Wired editors wrote. “Now industry leader Garmin is making the crucial leap into networked smart phones, laptops and PTAs — that’s personal travel assistants. Let 10,000 localized services bloom.”
To reach David Hayes, call (816) 234-4904 or send e-mail to dhayes@kcstar.com.
—–
Copyright (c) 2007, The Kansas City Star, Mo.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
NYSE:S, NYSE:T, NASDAQ-NMS:GRMN, NASDAQ-NMS:CERN, NASDAQ-NMS:AMZN, NASDAQ-NMS:MSFT, NASDAQ-NMS:INTC, NYSE:IBM,