New Cell Phones Add to Helpful Mortgage Technology
Another week, another breakthrough in mortage technology. While Sprint’s new mobile broadband phone wasn’t made specifically for real estate agents, the new tech toy’s ability to access the multiple listing service, take and send photos, give directions and create documents on a keyboard lends itself nicely to their needs.
“Agents can receive and respond to prospect e-mails when waiting to show a house,” Sprint’s Roger Gaunt said of the PPC 6700 cell phone. The device has blazing speed for a handheld device; “broadband” Internet access is synonymous with “high-speed connection.” Verizon also offers broadband phones, Gaunt noted.
The Sprint phone, which launched in September, also has Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint and Word software loaded, a trio that can be of great use to realty agents in calculating rates, making presentations and creating documents.
Realtors are embracing the Internet, with more than a third of their business now being generated from the Web, according the California Association of Realtor’s 2005 Use of Technology Survey released in September.
Forty-six percent of surveyed Realtors said they use e-mail as their primary form of communication with clients, and 31% said a Blackberry or Treo was their most important technology upgrade in 2005.
With that in mind, the Sprint device, which Gaunt described as an alternative to the Blackberry or Treo, presents an option worth considering. The device costs between $480 and $630.
A highly touted feature of the phone is EVDO (Evolution Data Only), which provides wireless data connections that are 10 times as fast as a regular dial-up modem. Agents also can take quality photos with camera phones on the PPC 6700, upload and send property photos. The device has a 1.3 megapixel camera.
Another snappy feature for agents: Global Positioning Systems. It’s possible for an agent to get directions to house he or she is showing via GPS on the phone. Thanks to GPS, an agent need only key in the address where he or she is going, and the system generates directions to that address.
Like many smart devices, the Sprint phone is essentially a computer itself, and it runs a mobile version of the familiar Windows operating system called Windows Mobile. In fact, the manufacturers claim that it’s the first Windows Mobile 5 based smart phone device to launch in U.S. markets, though such claims often are disputed.
The high-speed access is only available in certain cities, but will broaden to all the cities that have regular cell phone access by early next year, Gaunt said.
