Selecting a Smartphone

With every major carrier offering Smartphones, our users are getting more and more choices every day.  Each one has its good and bad attributes, so we thought this would be a good place to provide an overview for our merchants.

Our highest recommendation, for beginner and expert alike goes to the Palm based PDA's like the Treo Series.  These are carried by all the major carriers (Except T-Mobile), and are by far the easiest to use and most trouble free.  In addition, part of the Palm Specification is a Serial connector on the bottom, allowing use of our less expensive Pocket Merchant Card reader and printer.  The Treo's touch screen allows the user to capture the customer's signature onscreen, just like UPS and FedEx! 90% of our merchants use Treos' but the Treo users have the least number of service and problem calls (no wonder we like them so much!) Current models include the 600, 650, and 700P.

For the more experienced user who is familiar with the Microsoft Windows Mobile environment, there are two choices:  First is the Pocket PC, which, like the Palm, features a touch screen.  These are the easiest Windows mobile units to use.  These include the 6600 and 6700 Pocket PC's, and other units like the Treo "W" and "WX" units.

These units have favor with big IT departments for the ease of integration with Microsoft Exchange.

The second Microsoft option is the Windows Smartphone.  These units, while smaller are harder to use due to the lack of a touch screen, and the merchant must print 2 receipts, as there is no on-screen signature capture. Almost all Windows units need to use the Bluetooth card reader and printer as they do not have a serial connector.

Blackberry users can now also enjoy the power and benefits of the Pocket Verifier system.  We support the standard format 7200 series, as well as the high-resolution 8700 series (sorry, no support for the "vertical" units like the Pearl yet). 

Blackberries need the Internet service plan to communicate with the Payment Gateway, and use our Bluetooth card reader and printer, the Pocket Spectrum.

Due to licensing agreements on the development platform, the software is "locked" to a particular Blackberry, and cannot be moved from phone to phone like our Palm and Windows Mobile versions.  Fortunately, most Blackberry users hang on to their units ferociously as it is their day to day email device.

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