A new breed of applications and servers can easily be combined to make a great email solution for on the go access. An example of this new breed is Basejet (at http://www.basejet.com), an excellent always-on wireless email solution with support for Microsoft Outlook and Exchange, Lotus Notes, and POP3/IMAP4.

Learning from the past
Wireless connectivity for the Palm OS has improved greatly since the introduction of the Novatel Minstrel wireless modem in 1998. The original Minstrel was bulky and had regionally spotty coverage. Novatel has improved their modems over time, but looking at the marketplace would lead one to conclude that wireless ISPs (Internet Service Providers) aren't faring well with the recent demise of both OmniSky and Yada Yada. Qualcomm's pdQ, a combination of a Palm OS device and a CDMA phone, also did not fare too well. It was too expensive and came in a less than attractive form-factor.

It took a markedly different approach to prove that there was a large, corporate market for wireless handheld devices. Research In Motion introduced the Blackberry wireless device two years ago, with out-of-the-box support for wireless corporate email. Blackberry strongly proved that always-on wireless corporate email was possible and had immense user appeal.

In 2001, Kyocera (which acquired Qualcomm's handset business) shipped the Smartphone: the first largely available implementation of a "converged" device, or a combined cell phone and PDA, but Wireless service for this device was only from Verizon, and later Sprint. Recently, several converged devices have emerged, including the Samsung SHP-I300 (which I reviewed in the February 2002 issue of PalmPower at http://www.palmpower.com/issues/issue200202/samsung001.html), the Handspring VisorPhone, and the Handspring Treo.