Normally I husband power by dropping brightness to minimum, disabling infrared, and setting the phone to switch off automatically for six hours each night. Even so, I have had a few days of heavy phone use on the road in which the battery did not last from morning to night. Hence the spare battery.

The hardware supports enhanced location services, if phone carriers ever get around to offering them. Mandated by law and overdue, those services will transmit the phone's position to 911 emergency operators. The same technology would enable carriers to make commercial offerings based on where you are, including, God forbid, "push" text enticing you to a nearby store. A user setting lets you keep your location private, except during emergency calls. All this, for the moment, is strictly hypothetical.

The phone stores up to 99 speed dials and 30 voice-activated phone numbers. Voice dialing works well. If used with a speaker and external power, as in a car kit, you may choose to answer the ringing phone by saying "yes" or "no." One thing for the wish list: a "redial last number" voice command.

An included Message application (see Figure H) handles text competently, sending and receiving by short messaging service, or SMS, or by standard email. The "canned text" choices can be edited.

FIGURE H

The Message application handles text competently but can take other functions hostage.

Software
Kyocera has tweaked the Address Book so that tapping a number dials it. Tapping an email address launches the built-in Eudora mailer. You can dial a phone number from any application (Memo Pad, for example) by selecting the number and tapping the Dialer silkscreen.

The Memo Pad is also improved, with a color sketch pad and a two-minute voice memo available (see Figure I).

FIGURE I

The improved Memo Pad offers voice and color sketch options.

The Memo Pad graphics include color and line controls, as shown in Figure J.

FIGURE J

Memo Pad graphics include color and line controls.

Pressing and holding the Memo hardware key starts a voice recording. It is a pity that Kyocera did not enable this function to record phone calls. The two-minute limit on voice memos is fixed, storing the sound in a separate chip. You cannot record onto the SD card or transfer recordings to a desktop computer. See Figure K.

FIGURE K

The Voice Memo can be up to two minutes.

Music playback is controlled by rudimentary Jukebox software see Figure L)

FIGURE L

Music fidelity is quite good, but the Jukebox software is rudimentary.

Fidelity is quite good, but the software does no more than adjust volume and balance. It cannot save playlists, change the play order, or mark a spot to resume play, which is important when listening to audio books. There is a workaround: tap the Dialer silkscreen, which activates the phone, and MP3 play will stop. When you return to Jukebox it will begin play where it left off. Kyocera's software development kit includes access to the MP3 hardware, and I hope someone writes a better front end. Because it controls a separate chip set, Jukebox is among the few applications that work in the background. You can start a song and keep listening while you read a novel or add tasks to your To Do list, etc.