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Handhelds Hardware

DesignTechnica Reviews Motorola Accompli 009 68

Posted by timothy from the named-by-a-car-maker dept.
Ian Bell writes: "Designtechnica does a review of Motorola's new Accompli 009 2-way communicator. 'The ACCOMPLI sports the standard cast of communication and organization features - voice calling, calendar (syncs with Outlook or other personal information management programs), contacts, SMS, web browser, and a splash of ring tones and games. Not so standard is an RF modem that enables you to connect to the Internet through a data cable and operate as you would from a PC... ' While the features look good on paper, the unit has little to be desired. This is the first full review of the Accompli 009 on the net. Thanks guys."
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DesignTechnica Reviews Motorola Accompli 009 More

DesignTechnica Reviews Motorola Accompli 009

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  • So if it has little to be desired, why are you posting the story to Slashdot?

    • its still a geek toy. gotta report pro's and con's of whats out there so people know what to expect when buying their new toys.

      • I suppose ...



        But in my opinion, it's only "stuff that matters" if it has features that everyone, or at least I, am interested in. If the story post itself admits that the device has little to be desired, it doesn't strike me as news. To each his own.

        • But in my opinion, it's only "stuff that matters" if it has features that everyone, or at least I, am interested in. If the story post itself admits that the device has little to be desired, it doesn't strike me as news. To each his own.

          By that logic, you're saying that anything slashdot don't review 'has little to be desired'. Therefore they would have to review EVERYTHING else otherwise you would think it bad. Get some coffee man, you're acting nuts!

  • Target price? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by InterruptDescriptorT ( 531083 ) on Wednesday March 06, 2002 @10:29AM (#3118530) Homepage
    When the reviewer says there's "little to be desired", to whom is he referring? A more geeky, tech-savvy audience or the everyday user? It has SMS, GPRS, and a whole host of other features that will soon be standard in all portable communications equipment. Sure, you can't run Linux on it or create a Beowulf cluster of them, but I can't see what's left "to be desired". I think this is a great combination of a portable communications device with PDA-like functionality. Can anyone point me to anything better that has these so-called desired features?

    See, I don't know about you guys, but just looking at the specs and the picture of it made me want it. (I'm impulsive that way. :-) )
    • D'oh! Two minute filter got me. :-|

      Anyway, did anyone catch the target price on this thing? I won't pay upwards of $500 for it, but in the $200-$250 range, it would be a near-perfect alternative to high-end cellphones that can't boast half of those capabilities.

      And does anyone know what the service charges would be for GPRS? I have to admit I'm not too up on GPRS. If access would be any cheaper than Palm.Net ($50/month for unlimited transfer? Forget that noise!), I'd be willing to sign up.
    • Can anyone point me to anything better that has these so-called desired features?

      The Handspring Treo. Everything but GPRS, which will be a free upgrade this spring/summer. It does all this and it has a UI that's actually useful.
  • Allow me to pick a nit here:
    While the features look good on paper, the unit has little to be desired.
    If you were trying to say it's inadequate, I believe the proper phrase would have been "leaves a little to be desired". You don't want to imply that you don't desire anything from it because you're trying to say that you do...

  • In the tradition of Motorola they use a clam-shell design which saves space and a larger screen.

    Just like my Timeport.

  • Hmm (Score:2, Funny)

    by headchimp ( 524692 )
    Syncs with Outlook? I'm just waiting for the first virus to hit it.

    I can see it now, a virus with a sound clip that goes from device to device saying, "Tag, you're it"

  • It sounds at first that it is another device for Microsoft shops, because the article is a bit light on details. In particular,

    Desktop PC Partner Suite
    * For use in Microsoft Windows 95/98/2000 and Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 environments.

    I wonder what does this means exactly.

    Features are explained in greater detail on the Motorola site [motorola.com].

    • Yeah, jeez, I hope they haven't targetted the operating systems which have the vast majority of desktop installations!!!

      • Re:More features below (Score:2, Interesting)

        by forged ( 206127 )
        Well, of course they have (it would be silly from them on a commercial ground to do otherwise).

        What I have in mind specifically is how one will be able to interact with the device, possibly using a non-MS operating system.

        Technically their device runs their own proprietary OS called Wisdom OS [motorola.com]. The documentation of their windosw-based application (TrueSync Desktop [motorola.com]) suggests that open protocols are used, such as POP3, SMTP etc.

        However for your calendar / contacts database app, Outlook seems to be the only choice...

  • Toys for Geeks (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Cryptopotamus ( 460702 )
    When I worked for (a large paging company starting with the letter S and ending in L), an employee pointed out to me that highly-integrated communications devices are stuff for geeks. I believed him. Do plumbers carry around Palm Pilots with cellphones attached? No. They have those old 1993 Motorola pagers that cost $3.95 a month. So my advice is, stop trying to upgrade to the latest greatest toy and get to work.

    • Re:Toys for Geeks (Score:3, Insightful)

      by garcia ( 6573 )
      my father works at an animal testing facility in PA. He has an iPAQ w/a 1G microdrive, wireless LAN connectivity, a laptop at home that monitors the temperatures in all the "cage rooms" (for lack of a better name for them) and calls him if there is any problem.

      he has a rather small cellphone (I don't know how his old ass can see the numbers ;) and he has had a handheld GPS unit for years.

      He is 55, he is definitly not a "geek". He just likes devices that make his life easier.

      What's so wrong w/that?
      • I don't know how his old ass can see the numbers

        I know how he feels. They used to call me "Eagle Ass", but now, I can see only with my eyes.

    • Re:Toys for Geeks (Score:4, Funny)

      by dstone ( 191334 ) on Wednesday March 06, 2002 @11:52AM (#3119151) Homepage
      Do plumbers carry around Palm Pilots with cellphones attached? No. They have those old 1993 Motorola pagers that cost $3.95 a month. So my advice is, stop trying to upgrade to the latest greatest toy and get to work.

      Um, I do work. And my work doesn't involve crawling around flooded basements, displaying butt cleavage, or sticking my arms into shit-plugged toilets. To each their own, I guess, but I don't generally look up to plumbers for lifestyle advice.
  • Still not the ideal (read the review) cellphone/portable, but at least it has different flaws.

    Review [greenspun.com] by Philip Greenspun.

    Maybe Microsoft will get it [microsoft.com] right.

  • Full Review? (Score:3, Informative)

    by shooz ( 309395 ) on Wednesday March 06, 2002 @10:43AM (#3118615)
    I've been waiting for this device to be available for quite some and I was excited to see the "first full review available on the net". This review seems to be cut short because the reviewer had a hard time with the navigation. Very professional.

    Does anyone have any real world experience with this device? I like the design, and Motorola also makes an SDK available for their WisdomOS so you can develop your own apps.

    Some links:

    Accompli 009 Home page:
    http://www.motorola.com/MIMS/MSPG/Products/ Two-way /accompli009

    WisdomOS Home Page:
    http://www.motorola.com/MSP/products/wisdom /index. html

    • Re:Full Review? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by xurble ( 184028 )
      It's OK to develop for. The motorola SDK is good and they provide a nice IDE.

      Also the language is quite a nice high level, object based one with plenty of hooks for the phone/SMS functionality you want to use. PLus they say they're going to support java (J2ME?) later as well.

      I couldn't live with it though (ignoring the fact that it crashed a lot - it was an engineering sample) its just not that great.

      He's spot on about the interface being long winded, a common failing with Motorla.

      The worst bit is the fact that you have to use the hands free kit all the time though. So if you want to answer incoming calls you have to have the wires connected all the time which is a complete pain.

      The PDA stuff is pretty good, but not as good as a dedicated device, although obviously its nice to be able to dial direct from your address book.

      The problem is it doesn't do either job well enough. As phone, it makes a nice PDA and vice versa.
    • Two of us have one at work. As we do wireless infrastructure, we also have access to pretty much every wireless doo-dad around. This is by far our favorite, though some people prefer the phone-shaped instruments. Basic statement is: of you don't need to play video games on your PDA, hate the pen writing interface, or have had to carry a timeport for years, so are familiar with the interface, this is the device for you. If these are not true, it may or may not be the device for you. Carrying one of these instead of pager/cell/palm is very sexy, though.

  • I'm always a little surprized whenever anyone claims that something is the first on the net: Did they exhaustively seek out ever niche and crevice of the net to prove if this is true? It just seems so rural to claim something is the first among millions of possible hosts, with billions if not trillions of pages out there.

    Of course you could hardly call the two page snippet on designtechnica a "full review" anyways, and that's ignoring the easy to find obvious fact that there are dozens of other easy to find (disproving the first claim) reviews out there [google.com], possibly themselves earning the illustrious "first on the net" title.

  • Buy one. Play with it. Still find that you have post its(r) everywhere, another GSM phone anyway which you use because you look stupid talking to what everyone else thinks is a palm...

    ...still use a diary because your new PDA runs out of batteries anyway... etc etc
  • I heard about this product from motorola back in 2000 doing research in sms and other wireless data. There were very few details back then, since it wasn't ready yet. I guess now I can finally see what they meant when they said there would be "a better, more advanced model with better wireless connection."

    Having used both RIM blackberry and timeport product, blackberry's interface feels much more intuitive and user friendly. though client/server apps should be easier with Accompoli. The keyboard on the accompoli looks very similar to the timeport product, so typing will still be difficult. Also the form factor of the timeport was a bit bulky and not very good if someone wants a device they want to put in their pocket. RIM blackberry's slim profile was better than timeport, though the balance between screen size and form factor is a tough decision.

  • Proprietary PIM (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pinkUZI ( 515787 ) <slashdot.7.jmask ... et.com minus cat> on Wednesday March 06, 2002 @11:10AM (#3118786) Journal
    I find it interesting how the major cell phone manufacturers don't seem to be shy about creating their own proprietary PIM software on each different model phone they produce. I prefer the Treo [handspring.com] for its use of PalmOS [palm.com], which has the market share today - I like the idea of being able to have some of my favorite apps on the device as well. Whereas, something like this, you better like what they put on 'cause you ain't gettin' no different.

    • Re:Proprietary PIM (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I have some experience with this stuff. One of the reasons why the PIM features are different and proprietary for CDMA phones (gsm is different) is because the older CDMA reference board uses an x86 chip. Because of how x86 handles memory, it was difficult to utilize the memory effectively & easily. A lot of phone manufacturers wrote their own proprietary PIM features, which are still being used today. Most of the newer phones CDMA, GSM and TDMA use an ARM or some other type of RISC processor, so eventually the built in PIM features of phones will become more standard.

    • I agree, one of the reasons I shoot my girlfriend don when she tries to plug the "accompli" is the lack of palm OS (Full sized screen too). I might as well get a Palm 705 [palm.com] (449$). That seams a better deal for me, but the all time killer: The Handspring Treo! [handspring.com] If I put these two up for the battle against eachother, I can't see why I would want this Accompli thing. After all the accompli is 649$! [motorola.com] (Without service plan). I'm kinda hooked on this service plan [handspring.com] here for the Treo, too bad I have to wait a bit for it to be available in Canada (A week or few?).
  • ...I hope that thing doesnt have any link lights on it... [slashdot.org]

    /me takes off his tin foil hat..

  • He can't even get the network right. The 3rd paragraph says it's TDMA. The specs (copied from Motorola's page) show it to be tri-band GSM.

  • These are pretty nice. (Score:4, Informative)

    by laserjet ( 170008 ) on Wednesday March 06, 2002 @11:26AM (#3118904) Homepage
    The Accompli is a nice device for those who need it. While I don't have one, I have it's "younger cousin", the Motorola Timport P935 2-way pager. It has the same keyboard layout and basic design as the Accompli, but has a monochrome screen and a 2-way pager transmitter instead of cell-phone transmitter.

    With my timeport, I was able to do away with both my palm and my cell phone, and I get unlimited paging and messaging for about $20 a month, instead of the $35/month for my cell phone.

    The Wisdom OS that these device run is not as nice as Palm OS, but it is enough for what I need. There is not a whole lot of software for them, and you are pretty much restricted to the applications that come with them - again, this is fine, because that's all I use.

    They are not as intuitive to use as Palms, but that is the price I am willing to pay to consolidate a communications device and PDA into one unit, about the size of a pack of cigarettes. For those who need to do this and don't need the extra fuzz that PDA's havem these are good niche devices, and the hardware is quality built, like most Motorol devices.

    I would encourage anyone interested to go look at a demo at a store and see if it would be right for you.

  • I'm waiting for this bad-boy [infosync.no] from Sony Ericsson. All the same type of functionality in a more phone like shape. Color screen, etc. I need a PDA AND a phone. Clam shells don't do it for me. I'm also in love with the trillian, but I'm betting that Symbian kicks Palm ass in the phone dept.

    -Russ

    • Unfortunately Symbian R6 (and now 7 I guess) did away with a lot of the features that made EPOC so attractive to geeks. File-based UI is gone. These devices feel a lot less like a full computer than a Psion 5mx did, even though they may have more processing power (though it appears that they don't have more memory, for reasons that escape me). The Nokia 9290 is a real dissappointment for me - I was seriously considering buying one until I saw that the old UI is gone, and there's no touchscreen. While this Sony phone is pretty, I'm hoping that someone out there can do better. What I want, essentially, is the Nokia 9290 with a reasonable keyboard (a Revo-style keyboard would even be better than what they're using now), a touchscreen/stylus, and a reasonable amount of RAM. I'm unlikely to be satisfied, though.

  • Finally, a use for flash... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by uigrad_2000 ( 398500 ) on Wednesday March 06, 2002 @11:38AM (#3119028) Homepage Journal
    Here [motorola.com] you can play with a simulation of the full phone. You can practice making, and receiving calls (the assumption being that once you use it, you'll think you need one!)

    If you choose not to press "skip intro", I challenge you to make it through the whole intro without laughing. Keep your headphones on.

  • The 008 is better. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Moderation abuser ( 184013 ) on Wednesday March 06, 2002 @12:10PM (#3119273)
    http://www.motorola008.com/008.html

    Supports Email, POP, Jabber, drawings, notepad, alarm clock, SMS, you know, all the standard PIM stuff and is an intuitive and useful phone into the bargain. A fraction on the large size, but they've got a smaller one on the way.

    It's *really* good for SMSs, I set up SMS alerting on some of our systems and at one point, got spammed by a bug in the alerting mechanism to the tune of around 9,000 SMS messages. The 008 handled it no problem. Took around 4 days to download and trash all the messages, but I didn't have to do anything manually once the inbox was configured.

    • http://www.motorola008.com/008.html
      ...
      Supports Email, POP, Jabber, drawings, notepad, alarm clock, SMS, you know, all the standard PIM stuff and is an intuitive and useful phone into the bargain. A fraction on the large size, but they've got a smaller one on the way.

      Hell, for all I know it might drive me home, get me up in the morning, make me coffee and wash my underpants for me. But I'll never know. Because Motorola's butthead "web designers" made a concious decision to exclude me from their web site. The link above simply shows me a blank white page (not even header/footer/left sidebar/etc navigation links!) which simply says:

      You need the latest version of Macromedia Flash Player to view this site. Click here to download.
      I'm in the market for a PIM which does what you describe. But I'm not going to support a company that doesn't bother to support me. I don't want Flash, and I refuse to download/install something just to get product specs, see a picture, whatever. So I'll never get to buy a Motorola 008.

      Sorry for the rant...

      -B

  • Not so standard is an RF modem that enables you to connect to the Internet through a data cable and operate as you would from a PC.
    Many manufacturers have been including the ability for a cell phone to emulate a modem - for years. Motorola and Samsung are prime examples, most of their models have done this for a while. The cell phone has a serial port that makes the modem AT command set. It pretends like it is dialing but connects directly to the digital network, all you need is a ppp enabled machine. This has allowed speeds to go from ~9600bps to 19200bps, since the modem no longer has to modulate data over a compressed 19.2kbps voice link. The only catch is older phones didn't always come with the cable. If you want one get an oem cable through an online vendor, Motorla wants 150 big ones for a cable + CD for an older phone.

    Here is some more info:
    GRPS Phones [cam.ac.uk]

    For Infra-Red connectivity - Linux HOWTO [mobilix.org]
  • I think this compares to Handspring's Treo 180. Primarily, because both can use GPRS. Any other products in the same league?

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