H
ave you ever seen a flying squirrel take
to the air? They don’t really fly, they
just glide for a few yards and then crash
into the nearest tree. The landings are
pathetic, but that’s evolution for you: It’s
always coming up with custom-fit and often
loopy solutions for every imaginable need.
DataWind’s PocketSurfer is another such
example. If you want to surf the web on the
road, but your phone doesn’t have a web
browser, but you do have a data plan, and
you don’t want to take a laptop with you,
then the PocketSurfer is perfect for you!
Otherwise, it’s hard to say why you’d
choose the PocketSurfer over a smart-
phone. Yes, it’s got a much bigger screen,
at 5.25-inches on the diagonal, but on the
other hand, the device is 6x3-inches when
folded, making it too bulky for even most
jacket pockets. The exterior is silver plastic,
complete with the same tacky injection-
molding seam you find on squirt guns, and
it scratches easily; by the end of our reviewperiod, the test unit looked like a bat-
tered checkbook. The PocketSurfer wasn’t
designed to be used on a flat surface, as
the top-heavy screen portion of the device
will simply fall backwards on its loose
hinge. So you’ve got to hold it with both
hands and use your thumbs for typing and
navigation, which gets uncomfortable after
10 or 15 minutes.
The PocketSurfer doesn’t have its own
wireless data service; instead, it connectsto your Bluetooth-enabled phone and
uses it as a modem, riding along on your
wireless carrier’s data plan. If your phone
doesn’t have Bluetooth, you can purchase
a Bluetooth adapter for your phone from
DataWind for $30 (we were even able
to outfit a three year-old LG TM510). At
this point, however, you might become
annoyed at the expense.
Not only do you have to
pony up for the Pocket-
Surfer, a wireless data plan,
and a Bluetooth adapter if
your phone doesn’t have
Bluetooth built-in, but also
an additional $10 a month
for DataWind, as all web
pages are funneled through
DataWind’s proxy servers
for compression. Argh!
Initializing the device,
connecting to the Bluetooth
adapter, and completing the
registration process were
quick and painless process-
es. And once we connected our phone,
the device stayed connected reliably up to
four feet away. Although the screen’s reso-
lution is 640x240, you lose some of the
valuable real estate to a status indicator
bar at the top.
Navigation is controlled using the four-
way rocker switch; clicking links, however,
requires you to take your thumb off the
rocker switch and press yet another but-
ton. Regardless of our data rate, pressingthis button always resulted in a two-sec-
ond delay before anything happened—at
least you get an hourglass icon to indicate
you did press the button. The custom
compression provided by DataWind’s
servers and the option to reduce the dis-
play quality of images can make loading
pages quite fast, but you still have to deal
with the keypad delays. The screen looks
dim even at high-brightness settings, and
the battery lasted less than four hours on
a full charge.
Smartphones and PDAs may have a
limited screen area, but these devices offer
plenty in return for the sacrifice (such as
portability and a plethora of third-party soft-
ware). The PocketSurfer reverses this deal,
giving you a single strong advantage—a
plenty-wide screen—while sacrificing just
about everything else. But if you don’t mind
a clumsy solution that’s as silly as wings on
a squirrel, it does get the job done.
—LOGAN DECKERDataWind
PocketSurfer
A clunky but effective way to take the
web with you
$200, http://www.datawind.comDATAWIND POCKETSURFERSURFERS
A much wider screen than
smartphones and PDAs
sport.
GRIEFERS
4Expensive, bulky, and
awkward to use.The PocketSurfer piggybacks on your cellphone’s wireless data plan, for web
surfing, but it’s an expensive and kludgy alternative to a smartphone.Six inches long and almost half an inch thick, the Pock-
etSurfer might wear you down faster than a PDA.OCTOBER 2005 MA XIMUMPC 83
6 "5.75"