[Some first hand user experience and impressions of the P7389 Tri Band from Motorola. The P7389 is already shipping in production quantities into Australia, and is undergoing field trials in the US and Europe. ]

By Robert Whitinger, Las Vegas -- I have the pleasure of sitting here next to Jim Filicette at CES2000 in Las Vegas. Jim served as Motorola's Product Manager for the Timeport P7389 during its announcement phase and is now Technical Marketing Manager for Motorola's "Smart and Connected Category". He is now working on the launch of the P1088 Java based WAP phone (stay tuned for a future article on this interesting product).

So now with a P7389 in hand and with Jim at my side, let's take a look at the product and see how it performs in a real WAP environment. But first before we do that, here is some background info on the device itself.

The Timeport (tm) is a "world phone" in that it supports all three GSM frequency bands. This means that you can travel between Europe, Asia, and the Americas, while keeping the same phone and the same phone number. The unit is Motorola's first product to boast a fully WAP 1.1 compliant Microbrowser. It also comes equiped with an infrared data link for wireless modem applications. When used with "Starfish" software, it will link to a variety of external devices including Palm and CE products. Keyboard entry of SMS messages is simplified through "iTAP", a dictionary lookup text entry method (one keystroke per character for most words). In its role as a voice phone, it features voice recognition dialing, and a built-in voice recorder with up to three minutes recording capacity. Weighing in at 3.8 ounces (108 grams), the P7389 easily fits in your shirt pocket and promises you a standby time of 40 to 150 hours (talk time of 120 to 210 minutes).

Now with the background info aside, let's turn on the power and take a look. One of the first things you notice is the holographic display. This is a nice feature as it is often difficult reading displays while standing in poorly lit environments. The P7389 holographic display seems to "glow in the dark" even though it is not artificially lit.

But how about its WAP mode? Let's try it out. One touch of the Menu button and we are offered "Access Internet, Select?". Pressing OK and a few seconds waiting time gives us a connection to a Phone.com gateway somewhere in the world. A few key presses later we are presented with "Go to site:". At this point the P7389 saves some keystrokes: entering just "wapsight" with no "http://" and no ".com" worked just fine. (I wonder if this works just as smoothly with ".de" domains?) Less than one second later, up pops the WAPsight main menu. Two keystrokes later and we are reading today's WAP headlines. Second test, let's pick a Europe based site: the Nuernberg Germany based wapmap.com search engine. Hardly a noticeable difference in delay time, and the site is easily navigable with a few keystrokes.

As far as my experience is concerned, I'll give the P7389 a definite thumbs up (for our international readers, this means that I like it). The WAP Microbrowser seems to operate as expected, the phone is small enough, and most importantly I can use it anywhere and anytime.

So what is the P7389 missing you ask? Since I do a great deal of travel between Europe and the US, I have an account in the US with Bell South Mobility as well as a D2 account in Germany in order to save on roaming charges. On my wish list would be a dual chip capability so I could carry both of my "identities" with me. What do you think Motorola?

The P7389 was announced in mid 1999, was shown at PCS99 and Geneva Telecom, and is now currently shipping in production quantities into Australia. According to Jim, "Field trials are well underway in the US and Europe," so we should be seeing more of this product on the street in the near future.

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