Motorola's Accompli 009, Part 1

At the 2000 Consumer Electronics Show, I saw a preview of Motorola's Accompli 009 Personal Communicator, a device that combines a PDA, phone and 2-way messaging unit into one small package. Motorola recently sent me a pre-production model to try out for a few weeks, and here's the first of my two-part review of the device.

Motorola launched the Accompli 009 over in Europe, and has recently begun selling it on its Web site for North American users. The device is a little bit larger than some of Motorola's other 2-way messaging devices, but still has the familiar clamshell design and is still small enough to fit on your belt. The Accompli 009 opens up to reveal a color screen (256 colors) and a full QWERTY keyboard.

Motorola packs a lot of features into the Accompli, and the $649 price tag shows it's going after the business user. Some of the features include:

* It's a phone!

The Accompli 009 incorporates both the Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) and General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) protocols, so if you can't get GPRS coverage yet, the device can drop down and work on GSM networks. In addition, the GSM protocols let you use the phone in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and the Americas.

The phone quality was pretty good on our test phone calls, and we had an optional speakerphone attachment that connected on the device's side. If you don't want the speakerphone, you also can connect a hands-free headset.

* It's a messaging device!

The Accompli 009 also has Short Message Service functionality, if you want to do your messaging that way. You can also do regular e-mail by inputting your current e-mail address (POP or SMTP e-mail) into the device. Setting up the device to add additional e-mail addresses was not too hard to accomplish.

The device's keyboard definitely is an advantage over regular cell phones when you want to send short messages or e-mail. The keyboard itself will remind you of Research in Motion's Blackberry device, although I felt more comfortable typing with my index fingers while the Accompli was on a table, as opposed to typing with my thumbs as you would with the RIM 2-way device. Your experience may differ.

* It's a PDA!

The Accompli has the now-familiar features of Contacts, Calendar, To-Do list and Memo that are a requirement for PDAs these days. Furthermore, you can download all your contacts and so on from most of the popular personal information management programs, such as Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, Act!, Sidekick, Lotus Organizer and Yahoo! Calendar.

One downside is that the device uses its own proprietary operating system, so you won't be able to download PalmOS-based programs. But Motorola says it offers additional programs for the device (see link below). Plus, other third-party programs are expected. You also get 8M bytes of flash memory, allowing some extra space for additional programs.

* It's a Web browser!

The Accompli 009 includes the latest version of OpenWave's Web Access Protocol-based micro-browser, which is a "love it or hate it" browser familiar to users who've tried to Internet surf via their cell phones. The browser is all menu-based, and the only advantage with this one is that you get more text on the screen before you have to click the "next" button. The browser lets you search for news, stock quotes, weather reports, traffic and so on.

Next time, we'll go over some other features and software installation issues, as we finish up this review of the Accompli 009.

Keith Shaw is Reviews Editor at Network World. In addition, he writes the "Cool Tools" column, which looks at gizmos, gadgets and other mobile computing devices.

You can reach Keith at kshaw@nww.com.

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