A New Way To Dial Up The Net

By Anita Hamilton

Need a quick way to check your e-mail and voice mail on the go? The new Microsoft Smartphone is one of the first cell phones to let you access your regular Outlook e-mail as well as offer personal-information management and multimedia features typically found only on PDAs. Running Windows Mobile software, it's available in two models: the Motorola MPx200 ($300 from AT&T) and, shown at left, the Samsung SCH-i600 ($400 after rebate from Verizon). The phones come with a Windows media player for listening to music and playing back songs, and they accept Secure Digital memory cards with up to 256 MB of data. You can even send instant messages. Microsoft claims you can do full Web browsing on the phones, but that's hardly practical on these small screens. Still, these pocket-size gizmos hold an amazing number of features.