Nextel’s PowerFone iP370 has two things going for it that leave other cellular phones in the dust. The first is nationwide service without roaming fees – something that saves me roughly US$10 per day while I'm traveling. The second is a big button on the side of the phone that turns the unit into a 21st-century walkie-talkie. Just press the button, wait for the beep, and talk: your voice automatically gets transmitted to everybody in your predefined workgroup. Although it's designed for contractors trying to manage large job sites, I use it to talk with my wife from anywhere around town.
If you're a bean counter, you'll also be thrilled that Nextel bills by the second, rather than rounding up to the minute. That could save you 25 to 50 cents per call! And like other digital cellular systems, Nextel has built-in paging and voicemail.
Nextel's system does have some drawbacks, however. Though the phone, based on Motorola technology, gave me nearly three hours of talk time and 10 hours of standby with its standard battery, it’s also three times the size and twice the weight of my analog cell phone. And while the sound quality is great if you are calling another Nextel phone, it sounds like you're talking underwater if you call a landline. There is also a weird one-third second delay – a result of the time digital phones need to compress and decompress your voice. It's as if you've reached somebody on the space shuttle.
I tried Nextel in Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego, and Boston and found the coverage to be excellent – although the Seattle system tended to get overloaded from 2 to 6 p.m. Nextel's service is available in more than 200 cities today; the company says that it will cover 75 percent of the United States by the end of 1997. For people who travel a lot, this phone can save you a bundle.
PowerFone iP370: US$199; $35 to $140 base rate per month. Nextel: (800) 639 8359, on the Web at www.nextel.com/.
This article originally appeared in the September issue of Wired magazine.
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