Internet on SmartPhone

O2 XPhone II is a professional business phone that runs Windows. You can even connect to the Internet from your notebook with it

Although there are tons of phones in the market-most are too jazzy for professional use and features are almost randomly chosen. The O2 XPhone II device runs WM2003SE (Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition) and has all the features that one needs in a truly professional phone.

At Rs 23,000, it's a steal ! The XPhone II comes in a small candy bar form factor reminiscent of Sony Erricson T610. The screen size is large and gives you 65536 colors at a 176X220 resolution. The phone is very light and weighs only a little more than a 100 gm. 

The usual connectivity options-BlueTooth, GPRS, Infrared-are all built in. The box comes with a hands-free cum headphones set, a charging cable, a USB-miniUSB cable and software. Once you install Microsoft ActiveSync and connect the phone using the supplied USB cable, it syncs with your Outlook and gets the contacts and appointments automatically into the phone. The cable also performs a 'trickle' charge that charges up your phone's battery. 

The phone already has Pocket Outlook, Pocket Internet Explorer, Photo Contacts, J2ME support, Windows Media Player, MSN Messenger and some games built in to the 64 MB FlashROM of the phone. In case you want more space, you can easily install a Mini-SD card that goes all the way up to 512 MB. Pocket Outlook can check your mail over GPRS and supports POP3 and IMAP4. Pocket IE and Windows Media Player work very well and even sites not built for mobile are rendered nicely on the browser. The player has MP3, WAV, WMA, WMV, MPG, AVI and the supplied headphones give you a nice stereo sound. You can even add you own music as ringtones. Since the phone runs Windows, there are tons of software available for it-from games to office suites, to professional tools etc. This version of Windows also contains the .NET Compact Framework and you can easily write programs for it too.

Check mail status, mesages, appointments at one glance Web browsing on the O2 XPhone II Check your e-mail on the move

Let's see how you can quickly connect to the Internet from your notebook using the XPhone II. For this, you must first be subscribed to the GPRS service from your mobile provider. Once that is done, in the phone, select Start>Settings>Data Connections> Internet Connection. Click on the Menu context key and select Edit Connections. Here, select GPRS Connections and Menu>Add. Finally select 'The Internet' in the 'Connect to' option and fill in the details of the GPRS connection as given to you by your provider. Press 'Done' till you are back to the Data Connections Screen. Make sure that the GPRS connection you just created is selected in the Internet Connection option. To test whether your GPRS is working, open up Pocket IE and either select one of the Favorite links or enter a new URL. If the GPRS settings are correct, you will see a small sign near the battery bar on the top of the screen and the browsing will begin.

To connect your notebook with the Smartphone, turn on BlueTooth in the phone by going to Start>Settings>BlueTooth>BlueTooth>Discoverable. Turning it to 'ON' will not work. It has to be in discoverable mode. Now in your BlueTooth enabled notebook, open My BlueTooth Place>View Devices in Range. Search for a new device from the menu and follow the prompts to install the new device. 

But before you can start using it, you must first establish a pairing between the two devices. Select the appropriate menu item from the list and enter a new passkey that the device should respond to. In a moment, the device will ask you to enter the same passkey. Do so to establish a pairing. Now you can start browsing from the phone. Open the Dial-up Networking icon for the XPhone II on your notebook. This will first connect to the phone over Bluetooth and then display the DUN window. Enter the username and password if required and the GPRS phone number as *99#. Press Dial to connect. We'll look at some essential software for Windows mobile powered smartphone next month. 

Vinod Unny



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