I travel a lot with my Windows Mobile-based Smartphone and frequently find myself discussing its power and utility with the people I meet. The two responses I hear most often are, “Why would I need that?†followed shortly by “All I want to do is make calls.†I end up detailing my daily dealings to doubters over and over again. This article summarizes the things I tell them!
Top of the morning
My Smartphone starts working for me just before breakfast. While many people use their devices as an alarm clock, I have a 13-month-old baby at home to take care of that. My device lights up each morning at 7 a.m., when I have configured my e-mail to begin syncing using Exchange Server 2003’s Up to Date messaging feature. All the e-mail sent from those who’ve been working late nights or who live many time zones ahead of me is downloaded and synchronized to my phone: 17 new messages. A quick triage reveals 13 are not of much interest to me—delete—and another three can wait until I get into the office—save. This leaves one, a question from a customer in the United Kingdom who needs an immediate response. I write a quick sentence responding to the question, adding a Web address with more information, and hit Send. One more satisfied customer.
Next comes breakfast. No Smartphone involvement here, but I do take a quick glance at the home screen to see when my first meeting of the day begins: a 9:30 a.m. conference call. Excellent! I still have time to stop at the local coffeehouse on my way to the office.
Espresso and expressways
“I’d like a grandé vanilla nonfat latté, please.†There’s nothing like a hot drink and a Smartphone to start the workday. I’ve configured my RSS News reader to pull news feeds from a few sources covering tech news and financial and world headlines (Fig. 1). I select a link to get the full story on the recent up-tick in the stock market. Maybe I’ll be able to afford that Bluetooth GPS after all!
Fig. 1: I use an RSS News reader to pull down and read news from a number of sources
Now that I’ve caught up on world events, it’s back in the car to battle the morning commute.
Bumper-to-bumper gridlock turns my normal 20-minute commute into a 45-minute frustration fest. I don’t think I can make it to the office in time for that 9:30 call. Fortunately, I have my Smartphone with me. Since I snoozed the meeting reminder during my cup of joe, a follow-up notice pops up on my screen, reminding me that I have five minutes to dial into the meeting. I select the meeting on my home screen, which opens the calendar, then select the phone number, which is already highlighted. I push the left-hand button once to confirm that I want to dial that number, and I’m virtually in the meeting.
Since I don’t like using ear buds and since driving with one hand isn’t ideal, I turn on the speakerphone feature, rest the phone on the console, and listen to annoying hold music while I wait for the attendees to join the call.
In the office and on to the airport!
On to the meat of my day: I’m in the office the rest of the morning, then pack up my belongings for a flight out of town to a customer presentation scheduled this evening. As is routine for me, there are a few key items I “pack†on my Smartphone’s SD memory card:
1. Itinerary & Airline Schedules: Our corporate travel agency e-mails a PDF file containing a complete itinerary, which must come along with me. In addition, since I often need to change flights and lookup airline schedules, I keep a copy of most major airline timetables on my device. I use the ClearVue PDF viewer (http://www.westtek.com/smartphone/pdf/) to view these PDF documents (Fig. 2) on my Smartphone—less paper to lose.
.Fig. 2: I use ClearVue PDF to view documents formatted in Adobe’s Acrobat Reader format.
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