New services help simulate the power of smartphones

If you have an ordinary cellphone – the type that you got free, or cheaply, when you signed up for service – you might envy those with phones that are also personal digital assistants, like BlackBerrys, Treos, Sidekicks, and Windows smartphones.

Those devices, typically costing $200 to $400, let you do more than just make phone calls and take pictures. They are pocket-sized computers equipped for many functions, including e-mail, Web browsing, and contact management, note taking, financial recordkeeping, and a calendar.

But as it turns out, that humble cellphone in your pocket may be able to do all this and more, depending on its built-in features and the available add-on software.

The screen may be a bit smaller than on a palmtop, and you will lack an alphanumeric keyboard, making typing a lot harder – but as anyone who has sent text messages or entered names into their phone’s address book knows, you can peck out letters using the numeric keypad.

Cellphone manufacturers, carriers, and independent application providers are now offering lots of programs and services that can be used on a wide number of phones. Not all services work on all phones. Some are carrier-specific, and some work only on certain phones.

Many require that the phone be able to handle programs written in Java (most new ones are). Some services are free; others charge a monthly fee.

There are a variety of ways to get these applications, and you probably already have some. In addition to Bluetooth and a camera, the Nokia 6102i, effectively free after a rebate from Cingular Wireless, comes with software applications including an audio recorder, an alarm clock, a calendar, a to-do list, a note taker, a calculator, a countdown timer, and a stopwatch. It also has AOL, Yahoo, ICQ, and MSN instant messengers, a text messaging program, an FM radio, e-mail, and, of course, an Internet browser.

And all of this is before you download any applications over the wireless network from the Cingular Mall, where you can buy games, ringtones, graphics, and other applications.

Sprint’s Samsung M500, available for as little as $9.99 after rebate, has a comparable list of built-in features, along with a dictionary and the ability to store files and play music. Like more expensive handhelds, it comes with a USB cable to sync with a PC and a 64-megabyte microSD card (for about $30 you can buy a one-gigabyte card) to store MP3 files that you can play on the phone.

It can even display an analog clock, but the real power of this and many other phones is the applications you can buy and download.

Some of the productivity programs that can be downloaded from Sprint are RandMcNally StreetFinder, MapQuest Mobile, Vindigo City Guide, Zagat restaurant guide, and FlyteSource Mobile, which gives real-time flight status. These or similar services are also available on phones from other carriers.

All cellular carriers offer some type of e-mail service, sometimes for an extra fee. But consumers have choices. In addition to the carrier’s services, there are free third-party services you can use, including Yahoo Mail, Gmail, and Flurry.

Before using any of these services or downloading any applications, check to see what, if anything, it will cost. Even if the application is free, there may be data or air-time charges from your carrier, and there may be plans that can reduce those charges.

Flurry, a free service that works with several carriers, is both an e-mail application and an RSS (for Really Simple Syndication) news reader, which you can use to subscribe to frequently updated content. You start by visiting www.flurry.com from your PC and entering your cellphone number, carrier name, e-mail address, and password, and any RSS feeds you wish to subscribe to. The service then sends a text message to your phone with a link for downloading the program.

The service works with most publicly available e-mail accounts, the company’s chief executive, Sean Byrnes, said. It can also import up to 430 contacts from Outlook, Gmail, and any other program or service that can export standard comma separated values, or CSV, files. You can also dial a phone number from that contact list.

Google recently started offering a free cellphone version of its popular Gmail service. If you have signed up for a Gmail account, you can download the application by pointing your cellphone browser to gmail.com/app. You enter your Gmail user name and password, and a few minutes later you are reading your mail. You can also compose and respond to mail and bring up your Gmail contact list.

Yahoo is conducting a public beta test of its free Go 2.0 service, which has numerous applications, including a phone-centric Internet search tool. You tell it where you are (a satellite-based locator will be available later) and it can find nearby restaurants, movie show times, stores, and services and display a map to your destination. Because it is a downloaded application (at mobile.yahoo.com), it is faster than using a webpage, but it can also link you to webpages through your phone’s browser.

Yahoo Go also gives you access to Yahoo e-mail synchronized with your Web account. Mail is searchable, and you can display JPEG graphic files. You can track your stock portfolio, follow sports teams, and get weather reports. You can also connect to a Flickr photo account to see or share photos from the road. Yahoo Go works with a limited number of phones from Cingular, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, Alltel, Telus, and Rogers.

You’re not going to find Microsoft Outlook on a run-of-the-mill cellphone. But with SoonR, a free application (at www.soonr.com) that runs in your cellphone’s browser, you can use your phone to gain access to data from Outlook and other programs running on a PC or Mac.

You can view thumbnails of Word and Excel files, and Windows users can read, respond, compose, and send Outlook e-mail. You can make calls from your Outlook contact list and consult and update Outlook’s calendar. The files and programs are not on the phone – you are using the phone for remote access to your home or office computer, and any changes you make on the phone show up on the PC.

You can remotely use most popular PC and Mac desktop search programs and forward files through your computer’s broadband connection. You can even run the Internet phone service Skype on your PC from your cellphone.

Many of today’s phones make use of the satellite-based Global Positioning System, mainly to help responders find you in an emergency, but the technology can also be tapped for location-based services, like turning your phone into a portable navigation device with turn-by-turn maps and audible directions through the phone’s speaker.

I test-drove both the TeleNav service, which works with select phones from most carriers, and Verizon’s VZ Navigator. Both are $10 a month. VZ Navigator can also be bought for $2.99 a day. Both use the phone network to provide directions, maps, and points of interest that are updated on an ongoing basis. They have a "points of interest" database with millions of listings. TeleNav also has a "gas by price" feature that taps into an online database of gas station prices to lead you to the cheapest gas in your area.

So instead of lusting over that palmtop or Apple’s highly anticipated iPhone, reach into your pocket and see what that phone of yours has to offer. You might just be carrying around a poor man’s BlackBerry – minus the keyboard.