While these location-sharing services have some interesting possibilities, they also raise some disturbing implications for privacy — or maybe it just seems that way if, like me, you’re over 35 years old. Lately I’ve been testing a cellphone location-sharing service that I found simple, useful and non-creepy enough that I can imagine people thirtysomething and older using it.

Send a ‘Glympse’ to share your location

The free service is called Glympse, from a company of the same name that has designed it to share your location with friends and colleagues in small increments of time — glimpses, as the name implies, of your whereabouts. Glympse just released a test version of the service as an application for the G1, a phone offered by T-Mobile that runs Google’s (GOOG) Android operating system.

The company will release versions of Glympse for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, iPhone and Nokia (NOK) phones in the coming weeks. Users can download the Glympse software onto G1 phones through Android Market, the online clearinghouse for applications for Android phones.

I used Glympse on an iPhone and a G1 and, for comparison, tried out a couple of other location-sharing applications, Google Latitude and Loopt. When you start the Glympse application, it identifies where you are on a map using a combination of location technologies in cellphones, including GPS satellites, Wi-Fi hot spots and phone towers.

Your location isn’t shared with others until you “send a Glympse” to someone. The software allowed me to send a Glympse with my location for selected chunks of time lasting anywhere from zero minutes to four hours. Picking zero minutes shared only my location at the moment of sending, while selecting four hours meant the recipients of my Glympse could track me for that period of time, wherever I went.

The sender of a Glympse can address it by entering a recipient’s email address, or a mobile-phone number for a text message. Recipients get a message with a link to a map on a Web page. A nice thing about the service is that it doesn’t require recipients to have the Glympse software, though the experience is richer when they do.

Sending a Glympse can be helpful anytime a friend, family member or colleague is expecting you. You can send a Glympse that lets a friend know you’re stuck in heavy traffic (although it’s wise to do that before you’re on the road to stay safe and, in some states, to avoid breaking the law). Parents can insist that teens send a Glympse when they go out for the evening.

Bryan Trussel, the CEO of Glympse, sent me several Glympses with short messages like “late lunch meeting” and “headed home” to explain where he was going. On the G1, I could see an icon representing Mr. Trussel moving around a map as he drove through the streets of Redmond, Wash., including his speed. I was also able to see traffic conditions, which would have been helpful if he had been running late. Glympse gave me a similar view of his location through a Web browser running on my PC. On the iPhone, the experience was more static, forcing me to reload a Web page to get a fresh view of Mr. Trussel’s whereabouts. Glympse says it will fix this so users of the iPhone can watch someone’s location in real time.

I encountered a bug with the service when I sent a couple Glympses to my own cellphone and that of a colleague — both BlackBerrys and neither of which had Glympse software. Both Glympses linked to high-level maps suggesting I was somewhere in North America, which wasn’t very helpful, even if it was technically accurate. The company couldn’t figure out what the problem was, and it eventually stopped happening for me too.

Once a Glympse expires, the service no longer tracks the sender’s location. It will show the sender’s last known location for 48 hours after the Glympse expires. Glympse may some day use your location information to target advertising to you, but the company isn’t doing that for now.

I’m far more comfortable with this form of finite location-sharing than the approach used by other services. Google Latitude lets you share your location to only a list of friends. It gives you the option of turning location sharing off or, through a “city level” option, it reveals only your general whereabouts. Loopt similarly allows you to set options to show, or hide your location from all or some online friends. A feature called Loopt Mix lists strangers you can send messages to in your general vicinity — many of whom seemed to be looking for romantic partners in my area.

Despite these controls, I easily forgot I was sharing my location with these two services. This might be fine for someone who enjoys being tracked down by friends during a night out on the town or is diligent about changing privacy settings when they want to go stealth.

I’m too lazy to manage my privacy so closely though. I don’t mind giving friends a look at my location, but only if I know the invitation isn’t open-ended.

• Email nick.wingfield@wsj.com.

Well, one of the American phone carriers, T-Mobile USA, has taken a step toward that ideal. It’s offering inexpensive phones that can make voice calls over either the company’s regular cell network or almost any Wi-Fi wireless network, including those inside your homes; open, password-free networks outside your home and T-Mobile’s system of 8,500 U.S. Wi-Fi hot spots in places like Starbucks shops.

These phones can switch seamlessly between Wi-Fi and T-Mobile’s regular cellphone network, even in the middle of a call, without dropping it, so you can just keep talking as you move in and out of Wi-Fi range. For instance, you can start a phone call at work over Wi-Fi, then get in a cab and the call will automatically switch to the T-Mobile cellular network. The process also works in reverse.

Even better, calls conducted over Wi-Fi, or calls that merely begin on Wi-Fi and then switch to the cellphone network in the middle, aren’t counted against your monthly allotment of minutes — no matter how long they use the cellphone network. (Alas, it works the other way as well. Calls begun on the cellphone network do consume minutes, even if they switch in the middle to Wi-Fi.)

Other cellphones have this built-in Wi-Fi, including Apple’s famed iPhone. But in these phones, the Wi-Fi is intended primarily for data use — Internet or email — not voice calls.

I’ve been testing T-Mobile’s new system, called HotSpot@Home, with a $50 Nokia 6086 flip phone and it works pretty well. I was able to start or finish calls at my home with my existing Wi-Fi setup and use an optional wireless router T-Mobile offers. The system also worked in several Starbucks in different cities, and in several commercial locations with open Wi-Fi service.

In general, my test calls switched seamlessly between the Wi-Fi and cellphone networks, and call quality was good. But in a couple of cases, the calls broke up or were dropped.

Of course, this cool new setup isn’t free. HotSpot@Home is an add-on feature to a regular T-Mobile calling plan. Through Sept. 25, it costs $10 a month for a single line and $20 for a family plan that covers up to five lines. If you sign up by then, you keep those introductory rates ever after. As of Sept. 26, the monthly fees increase to $20 for a solo line and $30 for the family plan. These are flat fees that don’t vary by how much calling you do.

There are downsides. The only phones available now, the Nokia and a Samsung, are very basic $50 ones with a two-year contract. However, T-Mobile expects to offer more phones. In a few weeks, it will sell a modified version of a sophisticated smart phone. The company refuses to identify the phone, but Web rumor sites suggest it’s a new version of the BlackBerry Curve with Wi-Fi built in.

Another downside: The first two phones don’t work with Wi-Fi networks that require log-in screens, other than T-Mobile’s. So, you can’t use other providers’ networks in hotels, airports and similar places. The phones lack decent Web browsers, and T-Mobile has automated access only to its own hot spots. Future smart phones with better Web browsers should overcome this limitation, but you might have to pay usage fees to the owners of non-T-Mobile networks.

Also, the phones don’t automatically connect to newly encountered Wi-Fi networks, so it takes time to go through the steps necessary to set up the new networks. They do automatically connect to networks used before that you’ve saved.

Also, making calls over Wi-Fi takes more battery life. Talk time on these first phones using the power-hungry technology is only two-thirds what it is on a regular cell network.

Finally, the flat-rate fee for unlimited Wi-Fi calls covers calls only to U.S. phones and doesn’t work from T-Mobile hot spots overseas.

Still, if you have lousy cellphone coverage at home or your office or tend to use a lot of monthly minutes, and you have access to Wi-Fi, the new HotSpot@Home could be a promising option.

Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online free at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

In fact, this category is getting so crowded that it’s hard to follow all of the contenders. T-Mobile and Sprint, for example, have just announced very similar smart phones running Microsoft’s latest Windows Mobile software. Both feature horizontal keyboards that slide out from beneath the screen. The T-Mobile Wing costs $299 after various rebates, while the Sprint Mogul, which runs on a faster network, costs $399.

But I’ve been testing two other new smart phones that I find especially interesting. One is the latest attempt by BlackBerry maker Research In Motion to appeal to consumers. The other is a high-resolution camera phone by Nokia, which costs more than even the iPhone.

The new BlackBerry Curve 8300, sold by AT&T, is sort of a cross between the maker’s low-end consumer-oriented Pearl and its larger, more traditional models like the 8800 series. It costs $199 after rebate, with a two-year contract.

Unlike the Pearl, which manages its slender size by sporting only a squished keyboard where two letters must share each key, the Curve has a full, if slightly compressed, keyboard. I found it no problem to use accurately. It does, however, use the Pearl-like trackball instead of the famous BlackBerry side-mounted wheel.

To accommodate the keyboard and a wider screen, the Curve is wider and a bit thicker than the Pearl, and has more of the traditional BlackBerry look. And it’s over 20% heavier. But it’s narrower, shorter and lighter than the 8800, though a bit thicker.

The silver-colored Curve doesn’t boast any technological breakthroughs. It’s mostly an attempt to bring the BlackBerry’s email capabilities to a model that doesn’t compromise the keyboard the way the Pearl did. It has all the traditional BlackBerry features, plus a two-megapixel camera, a slot for a memory card, and the ability to play music and videos.

In my tests, I had no trouble at all sending and receiving email on the Curve, taking or displaying pictures, or playing music. I was able to move over some songs and pictures from my own computer, and they displayed and played as promised. Voice quality was fine, and phone talk time is about four hours — reasonable but not outstanding.

In a welcome move, the Curve has a standard headphone jack, capable of playing music in stereo and handling phone calls. It also includes Bluetooth for wireless headsets and use in cars, but it doesn’t have Wi-Fi wireless networking. It also runs on AT&T’s relatively slow EDGE network instead of the carrier’s faster data network. And the Web browser is mediocre.

The Nokia N95 lacks a full keyboard, physical or virtual and its email is primitive, but that’s not its main purpose. This device is the best combination of a camera and a phone I’ve ever tested, and includes a long list of other media features.

The camera boasts five megapixel resolution, highly unusual for a phone, and it takes marvelous photos. When I transferred my shots to my computer, they were large, sharp and vivid, just as if they’d come from a standard camera. The camera has Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, multiple flash settings and various scene settings. It also has a burst mode capable of taking six shots in rapid sequence.

But getting such a good camera in a phone will set you back a whopping $749. And you can’t buy it through any phone carrier, only from Nokia’s Web site (nseries.com) or from various electronics stores. You have to buy a phone plan separately.

Nokia’s N95, left, and BlackBerry’s Curve 8300

Like the Curve, the N95 has good voice quality, but runs on the slow EDGE network, though a future version could support faster networks. Unlike the BlackBerry, the current N95 also can use Wi-Fi networks. Battery life is only fair: 3.5 hours of talk time. While Nokia touts the phone’s Web browser, I found it to be unimpressive. But the phone includes GPS mapping, with optional navigation. It also accepts memory cards for storage.

Physically, the N95 is small, but chunky; on one side, it looks like a plum-colored camera. If you slide its screen in one direction, the keypad is revealed. Sliding it the opposite way reveals standard controls for playing music and video clips. I was able to move pictures and songs from my computer, but the songs failed to display album covers when played.

For $749, you could buy the Curve and a very nice digital camera. But the N95 is for photo enthusiasts who want an all-in-one device. The Curve is a more mainstream smart phone that aims for a balance of features at a low price.

• Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online free at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

The convergence of the computer and consumer-electronics businesses, including the mobile-phone business, is accelerating. Apple dropped the word “computer” from its corporate name last month and announced its new iPhone big-screen cellphone, to ship in June. Hewlett-Packard quietly announced its first real mobile phone last week. Smart-phone makers Palm and Research In Motion are really hybrids of cellphone and computer companies.

Meanwhile, traditional mobile-phone makers like Motorola, Nokia and Samsung have all turned out smart phones, which are, in effect, little computers, with the ability to handle email, multimedia, Web browsing and more.

Nokia, long the leading mobile-phone company, has been pursuing an even more radical project — a hand-held computer that isn’t a cellphone at all. It has just brought out the latest version of this product, the $399 N800 Internet Tablet, and I’ve been testing it. The N800 is part of a long-term strategy by Nokia to evolve into a company that’s more a maker of small multimedia devices with connectivity, rather than primarily a maker of phones.

The N800 is an overhauled version of the 770 I reviewed last year. That model, priced at $360, was so underpowered as to be almost useless. The new one is speedier, more powerful, thinner and lighter, albeit a bit longer. Like the 770, the N800 is designed to connect to the Internet via a Wi-Fi wireless network, though it can use a cellphone as a modem. Like the 770, it uses a touch screen and virtual keyboard.

The new model has some nice features the 770 lacked, like a pop-out video camera, and the ability to make voice calls over the Internet. It can take two standard memory cards, rather than the one oddball card the 770 accepted. Like the 770, it does a far better job of browsing the Web than any smart phone on the market today.

The screen, like the 770’s, is huge — 4.2 inches diagonally — and with a stunning resolution of 800 x 480, significantly larger and sharper than the much-touted iPhone screen.

But, like the 770, the new N800 is a good example of how hard it is for a company that grew up in one business to migrate successfully to another. I can’t imagine many people carrying around this device. For one thing, the N800 is a tweener — smaller than a laptop, but too big for a pocket. It’s 5.7 inches long, 2.95 inches wide and 0.5 inch thick. It weighs 7.27 ounces. The iPhone is smaller and lighter.

More importantly, the N800’s software seems unpolished and unfinished. There’s no calendar application, no method for synchronizing data from a PC, no software for using the camera to record videos or snap still pictures, though Nokia says that’s coming. And there’s no simple way to use the camera for video conferencing with a PC, unless you get somebody else to download a special Nokia program. The company hopes to solve this later with a Skype program for the device. You can make a video call to another N800.

The N800 Internet Tablet, $399, has a touch screen.

Nokia is hoping that open-source developers will help polish the N800’s software and add functions. This is an idealistic goal, and has won the hearts of some techies. But mainstream consumers expect complete functions on the device, out of the box. Third-party software is a great thing, but it isn’t a substitute for strong software from the manufacturer.

Still, the N800 does some things well. Web browsing is a pleasure, because pages render much like they do on a real PC, and you can see a much larger portion of each page than you can on a typical phone, even a Windows Mobile or Palm model. Handy buttons on the top of the Nokia make this even better, by zooming in or out on the Web page, or instantly hiding the navigation controls so the page can claim the whole screen.

Instant messaging also worked well, although the only prominent service bundled with the N800 is Google Talk. I also successfully made and received Internet voice calls via Google Talk. These were clear and easy, though they don’t fully compensate for the lack of a built-in cellphone. An RSS feed reader, which sucked in headlines from various Web sites, was also good, as was the photo-viewing program.

The email program is fair, if pretty bare-bones and sometimes slow. BlackBerry addicts are unlikely to accept the onscreen keyboard in place of a real one. Some attachments, such as pictures or PDF files, open easily, but Word documents never even showed up in my tests.

We won’t know until June whether Apple has been able to successfully invade Nokia’s turf and make a decent cellphone. But so far, Nokia is struggling to go the other way.

• Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. See video versions of my reviews at wsj.com/mossbergvideo.

I attended the iPhone launch event, and was able to use one for a little while. That’s too brief an encounter to allow me to write a proper review. But I can say that it has the largest and most beautiful screen I’ve ever seen on a cellphone, even though it’s incredibly thin. It felt great in my hand. It has a brilliant new user interface; the handsomest email program and Web browser I’ve ever seen on a phone; a full-blown iPod music and video player built in; and even a cool new voicemail system.

The iPhone has some potential downsides — it doesn’t use a physical keyboard, instead relying on a virtual keyboard on the screen, which may put off heavy email users. It runs on the relatively slow EDGE cellular data network, though that flaw is partly offset by the fact that it can also use speedy Wi-Fi wireless networking. And, with a $499 base price, it’s expensive.

Still, the iPhone made my relatively new Treo 700p seem primitive in many respects when I compared them side by side. And the Apple product isn’t Palm’s only problem.

Palm’s position as the design leader in smart phones has been under assault for months. Major phone makers like Motorola and Nokia have introduced models that have most of the Treo’s capabilities but are thinner, sleeker and lighter — and much less expensive.

The Treo maker is starting to respond, but haltingly. It has brought out a couple of slightly smaller new models, but they’re no match in sleekness or style for competitors like the Motorola Q. They also aren’t as cheap. They do, though, have some advantages in software and functionality that, for some users, will make them preferable.

I’ve been testing the latest skinny contender, the Samsung BlackJack, along with Palm’s newest Treo, the slimmed-down Treo 750. Both of these phones — like the Apple phone — run on the Cingular Wireless network. Both also use Microsoft’s Windows Mobile software.

The new Treo 750 is slimmed down a bit from the familiar Treo 700 and 650 models. The 750 is also a little shorter, because it does away with the protruding antenna. In addition, it’s a hair thinner and about 16% lighter.

But next to the new Samsung BlackJack, the Treo 750 looks bulky. The BlackJack is a striking, all-black model in the slim tradition of the Motorola Q. It manages to cram a full keyboard, like the Treo’s, into a body that is much sleeker and better looking. The BlackJack is 35% lighter — and 36% smaller overall — than the Treo 750. It has a physically smaller screen, but that screen has a third better resolution than the Treo’s. (Of course, both screens look tiny and grainy compared with the display on the new Apple phone.)

Also, the BlackJack claims 38% better battery life than the Treo, and it runs on a faster data network than the Treo. (Neither phone includes Wi-Fi.) And, to top it all off, the BlackJack is half the price — $199, compared with $399 for the Treo 750.

One of the Treo’s biggest advantages has been its Palm software, which I consider to be better designed for email and phone calls than the Windows Mobile software from Microsoft. But the new 750 model can’t claim that advantage because, while it has Palm hardware, it uses the Microsoft software.

The Treo does have a small software advantage over the BlackJack. It uses a fuller version of Windows Mobile that has more features than the stripped-down version used on the BlackJack and the Motorola Q. And, because it has a touch screen, the Treo is easier to navigate than the BlackJack, which must be controlled with buttons and a scroll wheel on the side.

Also, the Treo’s control pad felt better to me than the BlackJack’s, which was cramped. I kept hitting other buttons on the BlackJack while trying to scroll or select icons.

In my tests, both the Palm and the Samsung sent and received voice calls well. Both also exhibited the clumsiness that is inherent in Windows Mobile — multiple key presses were needed to do simple tasks. Both have basic cameras with resolutions of 1.3 megapixels. (The Apple iPhone’s camera will be two megapixels.)

The BlackJack runs on Cingular’s new broadband data network, called “3G” or HSDPA, while the Treo 750 uses a slower network called UMTS. Oddly, however, in my tests, the Treo was generally as fast or even faster at retrieving Web pages than the BlackJack.

Of these two phones, I prefer the BlackJack. But if you’re in the market for a smart phone and can afford $499, you might want to wait until June for the Apple iPhone. The Apple entry is so full of promise that anyone buying a smart phone in 2007 should at least wait for the full reviews and a chance to try it out.

Email me at mossberg@wsj.com.

The slender Motorola Q, despite software that is markedly inferior to that of the Treo 700p, is wooing some users because it is much slimmer and now can be had for just $99, versus $299 for the Treo. The Nokia E62 is about the size of the Q and also costs just $99 these days. The tiny BlackBerry Pearl is just $199. And Samsung has introduced the skinny BlackJack for $199, too.

So, this month, Palm is striking back with a lighter, thinner, cheaper model of its own, the Treo 680, which is being offered by Cingular Wireless at $199.

Meanwhile, T-Mobile has introduced a new slim, light competitor called the Dash. It has built-in Wi-Fi wireless networking to supplement the slower cellphone data network. And it costs just $149.

I’ve been testing the new Treo and the Dash. Both are OK, but neither is as good as it could be. The new Treo still has great software, but it makes some compromises and still fails to match the new competitors in slimness, lightness or price. The Dash has very nice hardware, but is hampered by lousy software.

The Treo 680 is shorter than the Treo 700, because it doesn’t have the 700’s protruding antenna. It’s about 11% thinner and 14% lighter. But it’s still much larger than the new class of Q-type competitors. The Dash is slightly wider than the new Treo and about the same length. But it’s much thinner and lighter. The Dash feels great in your hand because it has rubberized paint.

This new Treo works just like the 700p. It uses the same Palm operating-system software, which is much easier and faster than the Windows Mobile software used by the Dash and the Q. As I have noted in the past, simple operations like deleting an email or displaying your calendar are usually one-click processes on the Palm OS devices, while they often take two or more clicks, or involve opening menus, on the Windows devices.

Also, the Treo 680, like the costlier 700p, comes with better functionality for handling Microsoft Office documents than the Dash does, even though the latter uses Microsoft software. The 680 has the same large, high-resolution screen as the 700p. By contrast, the screen on the Dash, while bright and vivid, is lower resolution.

But the new 680 is less capable than the 700 series Treos. First, it runs on a much slower cellphone network, called EDGE. This EDGE technology isn’t broadband speed, and is only about one-seventh as fast as the networks from Verizon Wireless and Sprint that the Treo 700 uses. Cingular does have a new network with speeds comparable to Verizon’s and Sprint’s, but the Treo 680 can’t take advantage of it.

Second, the Treo 680 is a big step backward in terms of its camera. The camera’s resolution is only about a third of a megapixel, while the camera on the Treo 700 — and the Dash — is 1.3 megapixels. Finally, the stylus on the Treo 680 is cheap and just plain awful. It actually bends when you use it.

The Dash is also stuck on the slow EDGE network technology because that’s the best data network T-Mobile currently offers. It makes up for it with built-in Wi-Fi, which is much faster than EDGE, and potentially much faster than the Verizon and Sprint cellphone data networks.

In my tests, I was able to use the Dash for email and Web browsing via Wi-Fi in my office, my home and a couple of coffee shops. The Wi-Fi setup and connection process was fairly easy, and T-Mobile has added software to the Dash that guides you through setting up access at Wi-Fi hot spots it operates in airports, Starbucks shops and other locations.

In fact, T-Mobile offers a data plan for $30 a month that includes both cellphone Internet service and access to its Wi-Fi hot spots. This is on top of the cost of a voice plan.

There are some downsides. The Dash doesn’t automatically switch on Wi-Fi. You have to do it manually. And, in my tests, it was much slower using Wi-Fi than a laptop was. For instance, in my home, on my very fast Wi-Fi connection, the Dash got just under one megabit per second, while a Mac laptop inches away got over 14 mbps. On a slower network in my office, the Dash got around half a megabit per second, while a computer inches away got 1.3 mbps.

I also found the keyboard on the Dash to be more cramped and harder to use than the one on the Treo. And the touch strip it uses to control volume didn’t work well.

If you have always wanted a Treo, but couldn’t handle the price tag, the 680 may be for you. Just be prepared for its slower speed and inferior camera. If you yearn for Wi-Fi in a slender smart phone, and can put up with a clumsy software interface, go with the Dash.

• Email me at mossberg@wsj.com.

The Finnish cellphone giant is introducing a phone called the E62 that resembles, and is aimed at, the Palm Treo, the latest BlackBerry phones from Research In Motion and the Motorola Q.

Nokia’s E62

Like those other smart phones, the E62 has a full keyboard and is actually a little computer that is meant to be a serious email device as well as a phone. Like the Q and the Treo, it can play music and videos, surf the Web, and display photos.

Unlike the Treo and the Q, however, the Nokia E62 can run a service licensed by RIM that allows it to behave like a BlackBerry. It can send and receive email using either a corporate BlackBerry server or a consumer BlackBerry service offered by a cellphone carrier.

I’ve been testing the E62 and I like it. It’s fairly utilitarian-looking and won’t likely become an object of desire like the Q and the Treo. But it gets the job done and may well be the best bargain in its category.

In the past, Nokia has relied on a smart-phone design that was a thick, long device that flipped open to reveal a wide, horizontally aligned keyboard and screen. That design sold OK in Europe but flopped in the U.S. Now, with the E62, Nokia is adopting the American-type design pioneered by the BlackBerry and used by the Treo and the Q.

Nokia is being coy about the timing, pricing and wireless carrier for the E62. But I expect it to be available late next month from Cingular Wireless. And I expect it to cost even less than the Q, which at $199 is the least expensive product in this group. The latest Treo models, the 700p and 700w, are being sold by Verizon Wireless for $299 right now, after rebates.

The E62 works on the so-called GSM cellphone standard that’s universal in Europe, and used by Cingular and T-Mobile in the U.S. This means it can be used in both America and Europe, as well as in some other countries. The Treo 700 models, sold by Verizon and Sprint, and the Q, sold only by Verizon, use an American technology called CDMA that doesn’t work in Europe or in most places outside the U.S.

However, that GSM technology also saddles the E62 with its biggest drawback: It is much slower at receiving data such as email and Web pages than the Q or the Treo 700, or even certain BlackBerry models. That’s because it uses EDGE, a GSM variant that has been blown away by a technology called EVDO used by the Treo 700 and the Q. In my tests, EVDO has been up to seven times as fast as EDGE.

The E62 also lacks a camera, unlike the Q and the Treo 700. But, like them, it has Bluetooth wireless technology.

Nokia has built in a sharp, vivid screen with a resolution of 320 by 240. That’s better than the resolution on the Treo 700w and identical to the Q’s screen resolution — but inferior to the resolution on the Treo 700p.

The new Nokia is a bit larger than the Q — wider, thicker, longer and heavier. But it’s thinner and lighter than the Treo 700, albeit a bit wider and longer.

In my tests, the voice quality of the E62 was very good. Battery life was decent, with a talk time of between four and 5.5 hours. The phone accepts memory cards for storage of files and applications.

The BlackBerry Connect service and software, likely to cost around $45 a month, worked well. After I installed the BlackBerry software on the new Nokia and configured the service on the E62 and on an accompanying Web site, the service “pushed” all emails from my regular account to the E62 reliably. There’s no limit to how much email you can receive, though the carrier may intervene if it believes you are abusing the service.

The only downside of the BlackBerry Connect feature is that there’s a noticeable latency when you open an email before it displays on the screen.

In my tests, the N62 could open most major email attachment types, including Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and Adobe PDF files. It’s also supposed to work with PowerPoint presentations, but in my tests, this function failed.

The user interface on the E62 isn’t nearly as fast or slick as on the Palm operating system used by the Treo 700p. But I preferred it slightly over the Windows Mobile operating system used on the Treo 700w and some other smart phones. There were still too many menus and extra steps compared with the Palm system, but at least you can delete an email with one click. Turning on the speaker phone was also quick and easy.

I was able to synchronize the E62 with Microsoft Outlook, and bring over my contacts and calendar, using the separate Windows software that comes with the phone. And I was able to load up the memory card with pictures and songs from my computer and use them successfully on the E62.

All in all, the E62 is a solid and inexpensive smart phone.

• Email me at mossberg@wsj.com.

The closest contenders are the smart phones, like Palm’s Treo models. But these devices are generally poor at one of the most important tasks people do on their computers — browsing the Internet. Because their screens are so small, they either render Web pages in a manner never intended by their designers, or they require a ton of tedious horizontal scrolling to view the page.

Now, Nokia, the big phone maker, has come out with a $360 pocket computer that aims to solve that problem. It’s called the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet and, true to its name, it concentrates on surfing the Web. The 770 can also send and receive email and instant messages, view images and videos, and play music and simple games. But its focus is on displaying Web sites really well.

The 770 has been popular in Europe, at least among techies, but has had little impact so far in the U.S., where it is available only via Nokia’s Web site (nokiausa.com/770) and a few other online outlets, such as Amazon.com.

Since Nokia is a cellphone maker, it’s odd that the 770 has no cellphone radio inside and can’t connect to the Internet via the latest cellphone networks, which now boast broadband speeds. Instead, it relies on Wi-Fi wireless networking, which is faster but much less ubiquitous than cellphone networks. It’s possible to connect a cellphone to the 770 and indirectly use a cellphone network, but as with all such setups, this is a clumsy approach.

I have been testing the 770, and I found that it performs its main function, Web browsing, better than any other pocket device I’ve tried. But it falls down badly on many other tasks, partly because of kludgy software and partly because it is agonizingly slow at almost everything other than surfing the Web.

The best thing about the Nokia 770 is the hardware design. It’s a sleek, thin, horizontally oriented device with a handsome black-matte finish and a small number of silver-colored buttons. It weighs just 8.1 ounces, and is only 5.5 inches long and 0.7 inch thick.

Most of the surface is occupied by the very vivid, bright display, which boasts by far the highest resolution I have seen on a hand-held digital device — 800×480, enough to display photos and videos really well and to view many Web pages without scrolling. This is a higher resolution than many Windows PCs commonly used 10 years ago.

By contrast, the screen on the Sony PSP portable game player, generally hailed as excellent, has a resolution of just 480×272, although it’s roughly the same size as the screen on the Nokia. And the screen on the Treo 700p, which has the best resolution of any smart phone display, is just 320×320.

Text looks very sharp on the 770, but it can be too small to read easily. To help with that, Nokia has placed buttons on the top edge of the device that can quickly zoom the display in and out, and put the device into full-screen mode, banishing all menus and icons temporarily.

Unfortunately, this beautiful exterior hardware is served poorly by the software, and by the processor and memory beneath the covers, which are easily overwhelmed.

Using the 770’s Web browser, I was able to successfully, and fairly quickly, call up a wide variety of sites, and all the ones I tried were rendered just as they would be on a regular computer.

In most cases, even though no horizontal scrolling was needed to read the pages, I often had to use the zoom feature to make out small text. Vertical scrolling using the stylus was easy. You can also skip from link to link on a Web page using the gadget’s five-way navigation control pad.

But the email program was so slow as to be essentially useless. Even simple tasks like selecting and deleting emails take forever. There’s another reason the 770 isn’t a very good email device: Unlike the Treo, the 770 lacks a keyboard; so you have to tap out emails on an onscreen keyboard or use handwriting recognition, which wasn’t great.

The image viewer, and video and music players, worked pretty well with pictures, song files and video clips I copied to the 770’s storage card from my Macintosh via an included USB cable. But I couldn’t figure out how to do some simple things, like rotating a photo.

The user interface is confusing. The same icon is used for both the Web browser and for turning on the Wi-Fi connection. The email program is buried in the Contact menu and the picture viewer is buried in a Utilities menu.

There are many more software oddities. The 770 also uses an unusual, hard-to-find type of memory card for data storage — a “reduced-size” Multimedia card.

If you are a gadget geek, or just want to surf the Web on a small device with a great screen, the 770 might be for you. But for most mainstream users, the 770 is a disappointment. With more horsepower and a revamped interface, it might get closer to the holy grail.

• Email me at mossberg@wsj.com.