When Panasonic introduced the X700 Smartphone back in February at the 3GSM World Congress, it said it would provide the ability to view and edit native Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents on the new Symbian-based device. The company didn't say how this would be done however.

Well it looks like the mobile office suite that will be delivered with the mobile handset will be Mobility Electronics' new iGo Quickoffice Premier for the Series 60 platform, which is the interface that runs on top of the Symbian OS on the new Panasonic phone.

Quickword

Quickpoint

Mobility Electronics introduced Quickoffice for Series 60 back in February. It is based on the acclaimed Palm OS version. With it, users can view and edit documents from email attachments, multimedia message attachments, and native Microsoft Office files saved on removable memory expansion cards.

Panasonic X700

The tri-band GSM/GPRS X700 Smartphone is Panasonic's first mobile handset to use the Symbian OS and the Series 60 Platform. It integrates a VGA digital camera, photo light and 65,536 color TFT display. Images taken with the camera can be edited and enhanced on directly on the device. The X700 also offers video capture, download and playback.

A miniSD card provides additional memory to store files and by using the miniSD adapter can link to other Panasonic AV equipment. With the X700’s Java capability, the user can download additional applications besides Symbian-based software. These applications include polyphonic ring tones and games.

The X700 supports MMS, email and Bluetooth, allowing users to send photos and documents to a PC or MMS enabled phone. Its Bluetooth capability also allows wireless connectivity through a Bluetooth hands-free headset and when connecting remotely through a laptop. The X700 also features a speaker independent voice recognition system to ease the dialing of numbers from the phonebook and to control some of the functions in the phone, without having to train it first.

The X700 smartphone isn't expected to ship till later this year.

Smartphones

According to Gartner, in 2003, more than 6.67 million smartphones based on Symbian OS were shipped worldwide. While this is a drop in the bucket compared to the over 520 million mobile phones sold worldwide last year, the overall sales of smartphones are expected to grow exponentially over the next few years.

The Nokia designed Series 60 interface is not only the most common interface for Symbian OS phones but for all smartphone's in general, as Symbian dominates the nascent smartphone market.

Five (Lenovo, Siemens, Samsung, Panasonic, Sendo and Nokia) licensees have announced devices with the Series 60 interface. In addition, more than 100 operators are now selling handsets based on the Series 60 Platform, including all the major GSM operators in the US & Canada. Later this year, the Series 60 Platform will also support CDMA, which could prove a boon in the United States where CDMA networks still dominate.