Didgets
Nextel phones Java-enabled

By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Columnist

Nextel is the latest of the cell-phone giants to turn their premium wireless models into personal organizers. In this case, the phones have become devices that can be useful even if you're stuck in a lead tunnel or otherwise venture out of contact with any cell or Internet network.

That's because the i85s is America's first Java-enabled phone. For techno-newbies, Java is a compact computer language, or script, used to write nifty little programs that can run in digital gizmos as small and memory-challenged as (surprise!) as today's petite cell phones.

The model, at $199.99, comes loaded with a suite of calculator programs (numeric keypad, tips calculator, metric converter), an expense pad and a Sega game for those moments when you are so personally organized you have time to kill. (You can get them on a new, cheaper model, the i85x, for $149.99, but this model lacks the voice recorder and a few other features.)

There also are plans to make other programs downloadable from the Web (commerce.motorola.com/iupdatephone/main/j2me_softcat.cfm). Games available include Tic Tac Toe, PaddleBall, Checkers, TeeTime (in which the user can define rating, slope, handicaps and other details about the course being played) and that favorite thumb-twiddler of the computer age, Minesweeper. (This thing is for business, did we mention that?)