Josey Puliyenthuruthel: Vanity phone on your wrist

GIZMO GALLERY

If you grew up in India in the 1970 and 1980s, you wouldn't have missed adverts by suitcase maker Blow Plast Ltd, better known for its V.I.P. range of moulded reinforced plastic baggage.

One of the pieces splashed across news weeklies then used to be the V.I.P. vanity case, aimed at the chic lady who could then carry all her cosmetics and personal effects in a near-cubical box.

Recently, Reliance Infocomm Ltd, the owner of the fastest-growing CDMA (code division multiple access)-based wireless phone network in the world, sent me a matt-finished steel vanity case. Sure that even the best-humoured people I interact with in the company were not hinting that I get a facelift on way to becoming a metrosexual, I curiously opened the box.

Inside was one of the more interesting gizmos I've come across in recent times. I say interesting, because it has little more than cosmetic value, but will pique the gizmo aficionado and reviewer for the miniaturisation possible with electronics. It points to the direction that wireless phones will move in future.

There is already talk "" some in the realm of fantasy "" among the mobile phone design community of trans-receivers pushed into ears with a tiny microphone running mouthwards supported with a thin-as-hair, yet sturdy cable. Such devices would entirely be driven by voice commands.

Or, there is the other rather fantastic design that visualises a speaker embedded in a tooth! The Telson gadget, in comparison, seems boringly contemporary; yet is the smallest phone I've used.

The Telson CDMA (the wireless technology used by Reliance and Tata Teleservices Ltd) wristwatch phone (wristphone, in short), made by a Korean manufacturer, is a few times bigger than the clunky pieces of steel and glass that pass off as timekeepers these days on people's forearms. It weighs a shade under 100 grams. The phone boasts of a miniature keypad on the wristband, but dialing using the tiny keys can be trying and voice-activated dialing, therefore, is a useful feature.

How does one talk in or listen to the phone? The Telson wristphone comes with a speaker, which is a mite feeble for the outdoors even while driving with the windows up in a car.

In addition, it has an infrared ear piece, which needs to be within line of sight of the wristphone, and a cute "finger-ring" earpiece that works well if you can hold up your ring finger to your ear while on a phone call. Again, a slightly unusual way of conversing on the phone.

The phonebook on the Telson gizmo can store up to 200 entries with four numbers each, email ID, URL and can assign a photo each with the number of the person calling in so that whenever you receive calls the caller's photo will be displayed on the screen.

This, admittedly, is a standard feature on most new camera phones today, but seems more cool on a wristphone. The phone comes with a plug-in high-resolution 330,000-pixel digital camera included in the handset kit that has a capacity to save up to 80 pictures.

Some of the other features of the Telson phone include three-way conference calling, call waiting and forwarding; a scheduler, calculator, alarm, stopwatch, unit exchange and world clock; predictive text input for short messaging service; and 16 polyphonic ringtones.

Together with the camera, the Telson TWC 1150 phone, being offered solely by Reliance Infocomm in India, comes for just under Rs 24,000, which makes it not too expensive a novelty gift among corporate chieftains or rich socialites. There are other wristphone models in the Far-East market (the leader for CDMA technology) like the Wristomo hawked by NTT DoCoMo in Japan, which are rated better than the Telson phone, but are not available in India.

(Josey Puliyenthuruthel works with content company perZuade. His views are personal and may not be endorsed by his employers, the company's investors, customers or vendors. Comments may be sent to josey@perzuade.com)