Microsoft and Motorola partner in a sleek new SmartPhone. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. It's not a full function PDA like a PocketPC phone or PalmOne's Treo 600. But the Motorola MPx200 with Windows Mobile software is giving buyers a lot to like at a price as low as 99 dollars. Microsoft product manager Jason Gordon... says there are some key differences between SmartPhones and PocketPC phones...

"We basically looked at the industry, spent a lot of time talking to customers and it was pretty clear to us that there isn't one form factor device that everyone would use. Some people were more data centric and some people were more voice centric ... meaning that many people wanted to use their phone mainly to make calls. The people that were more voice centric didn't want a larger device like a PocketPC. They want a device that was similar to the phone they had currently, but they wanted to get some of the power of what the PocketPC offered."

The Motorola MPx200... lets you carry Outlook data along with you... your contacts, calendar and email, it can play digital music files, has SD card expansion and Microsoft's Instant Messenger. The price of the phone being sold by AT&T Wireless is hundreds less than the Samsung version of the SmartPhone being sold by Verizon Wireless. One drawback to these new phones is... .entering data while away from your PC is difficult. You have to rely on the telephone keypad. They also don't include Bluetooth technology for using wireless headsets... and the Motorola doesn't take advantage of AT&T Wireless' higher speed Edge data network. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.