Fax To Palm  mobile fax FAQ for Treo, Palm and other Smartphones

How to send and receive mobile faxes using PDAs and smart phones

Table of Contents
Overview

Did you know it's already possible to send and receive mobile faxes using many mobile PDAs and smart phones?

That's the good news. The bad news is that there's no single, common way to do it. Also, for most types of devices you must buy and install after-market software. For most PDAs and smart phones, though, this is quite straightforward.

This document explains some of the options open to you in mobile fax transmission.

Avoiding Snake Oil

There are a number of products out there claiming to offer mobile fax via PDA. Many of these claims are technically true, but very misleading. The most common is "fax software" that lets you send and receive faxes, but not view them on your handheld. That's not particularly useful, is it?

For purposes of this article, we discuss only products that permit you to receive and view fax images in the same pixel resolution at which they were sent.

System Requirements

Data Connection. Your handheld device must have some kind of data connection to the rest of the world. Common types of data connection through which faxes can be transmitted to and from your handheld device include:

  1. Traditional Modem, in which the handheld device has a modem (either internal or connected via a serial cable) that plugs into a traditional telephone line.
  2. TCP/IP over HotSync, in which the handheld device sits in a cradle connected to an Internet-ready PC, and fax data is transmitted over the Internet.
  3. TCP/IP over cellular, which is just like #2 above but uses a cellular data network to carry the data. Examples would include Palm's Treo 600 or Nokia's 9000 series, both of which are essentially handheld computers with phone and data capability.
  4. TCP/IP over WiFi, which is just like #2 above, but uses local-area wireless networking. The best such product we've seen is the Palm Tungsten C.

Memory. Your handheld device generally must have enough memory to actually display a fax image. This usually means a few megabytes of RAM. Most PDAs, including all current Palm, Treo and Pocket PC models, satisfy this requirement. Most cellular phones do NOT satisfy this requirement.

Display resolution. Similarly, your device must have a large enough display to show a useful portion of the fax image. You need not have a display large enough to see the whole image, but at least, say, 10% of the image at a time. Again, PDAs and higher-end smartphones like Treo, Tungsten and Nokia 9000 satisfy this condition, while most cell phones do not.

Faxing to Palm or other mobile devices

The traditional modem is too cumbersome for most users, so we do not address it here. There are basically two good systems for receiving faxes on a Palm:

  • Business users: office IT administrators will want to check out Firepad Picture Viewer for PalmOS. Under the hood, this picture viewer is actually a minibrowser that can receive fax images from a web server. The admin simply creates a web-accessible folder for each employee, and sends incoming fax images there. The employee then checks the folder on his Treo or Tungsten device by running Firepad and tapping on his incoming faxes folder. This system is secure and sophisticated, with features like password authentication for each user. However, it requires administration, so it's not a good choice for individual users that don't have an IT person to work with.
  • Individual users: sign up for a fax-to-email service such as eFax. This service gives you a free phone number, and when someone sends an email there, it arrives as a TIFF image in your email box. Using PDA email software such as SnapperMail for Palm OS or Outlook for Pocket PC, you can receive these fax files directly on your PDA/Smartphone. Then, using an image program like AcidImage, you can view those TIFF images directly on your Palm or PocketPC. Printing support on PocketPC is quite good -- with Palm OS, it's quite limited.

Faxing from Palm or other mobile devices

I'm currently not aware of any product that allows you to send a digital image FROM a PDA or smartphone TO a regular fax machine. Please contribute your information.

Update 7/25/05: Tom Nielsen from Switzerland reports that any Nokia Communicator can send, receive or print any fax using its built-in messaging software. However, he says, he still prefers his Treo 650 (PalmOS).

Update 12/29/05: Terence Conklin of Conklin Systems reports that his CSFax application for PalmOS (and other platforms) handles some of the features missing in other apps. I haven't used it, but the feature list at Conklin's website includes the ability to insert text and drawings into a fax and then send it. It also appears to allow you to view and annotate -- the key features so often missing.

Printing faxes from mobile devices

In general, it's easy to print anything from PocketPC, but hard to print anything from Palm OS. Palm OS provides no printing architecture at this time. A very respectable third-party product called PrintBoy exists, but most applications don't support it.

Comments, corrections and contributions are invited: bill (at symbol) firepad (period) com.