Loading Up Smart Phones

By Dan Calabrese

The convergence of Web-browsing, GPS and memory-packed processors have enabled a host of fleet-friendly cell phones to emerge.

Moving quickly past the “push-to-talk” functionality that gained wide acceptance with commercial users, electronics manufacturers have steadily added fleet-friendly functionality to handheld devices thanks to oodles more built-in memory than the first two generations of flip-top phones.

With the “smart” 3G — third generation — wireless options, drivers can access Global Positioning System, animated route navigation, pre-trip checklists, fuel reports and entry into fleet-wide dispatch systems from hip to hand.

The limits of battery life, cell boundaries and small screens won’t permit cell phones to outperform fixed-mount and mobile computing platforms anytime soon. Plus, the more features added to the handset, the more cost to the user.

But if you want to hammer some data with your thin client Motorola i-Series or Apple iPhone, there’s a growing list of trucking applications to download.

DriverTech, a Salt Lake City company that started life selling hard-wired computers for trucks and military vehicles, contracted with iCooper Inc., Washougal, Wash., to deliver a host of onboard applications to the wireless handset.

The company’s iOTR system turns intelligent phones into data-collection tools that, said Scott Lemon, DriverTech vice president of sales, can capture everything from trip miles and proof of delivery to damaged-goods reports with photos.

The forms load up on the handset’s screen.

“It seems logical and intuitive that he should be able to do that on an iPhone,” Lemon said.

Higher-end cell phones have crossed over into BlackBerry land, in terms of brain power. Indeed, thinking of smart phones and personal digital assistants as separate hardware categories hardly makes sense anymore. Both are miniature PC wannabes with voice capability.

As an interface for fleet management, smart phones have their own limitations. It is no problem for a desktop or notebook to run an e-mail program, a Web browser, Microsoft Word, accounting software and a media player simultaneously. But if a message comes through while working, you simply switch windows and read your e-mail. Not so with a handheld.

“If you have a phone that doesn’t do two things at the same time, you could have a problem,” said Stephan Karczag, vice president of marketing for Cheetah Software, which provides routing, scheduling and tracking services for pick-up-and-delivery operations over basic, GPS-enabled phones. “

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