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O ver in Japan where not everyone has Internet access, cell phones take on such desktop duties as e-mailing and even Web browsing. The same is true in Europe, where the wireless network has replaced traditional landlines. All this action has led to the adoption of color screens for our cell phones. Yay.

Here in the States, we all have landlines with Internet access, but that isn’t enough for us. We want to e-mail people and access the Internet too. What is wrong with everyone? Why do we need to e-mail people from our phones? Do we really need to carry our entire lives and the whole world in the palm of our hand? Aren’t we all connected enough? OK, maybe not – UCLA does have the most atrocious cell phone coverage of any geographical region I have ever traversed.

Let me clarify. I don’t think that using phones for more than talking is necessarily dumb, but I have two points to make. First of all, who wants to stare at a three-centimeter screen and squint at tiny text or images? Second of all, I believe that a convergence of too many functions is not desirable. I say restrict our gadgets to one or two uses they can do excellently.

We are starting to see $500 Sprint PCS phones with attached cameras, Internet and e-mail capabilities. This added functionality is useful for those times when you urgently need to send a picture to someone and you’re just too far from a landline. My mind might just be in the gutter, but I can only see one use for these cameras – porn. And we all know this will lead to all that junk mail in our e-mail boxes now being sent to our personal phones. Great, now I’ll start getting “spam images” on my phone of some 40-year-old pervert sitting naked in a La-Z-boy from his apartment in a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona.

While I do love wireless gaming, I have not been sold on the games currently available on any of the phones. The screen size is just too small, and the buttons on a phone are not conducive to gameplay.

The larger Personal Data Assistant phones out there are really where it’s at. Their bigger screen size, better processors and Internet access make them viable portable e-mail and game portals. Leave the tiny phones to talking, text messaging and the occasional graphics.

By 2008, 97 percent of all phones will have color screens. This is great, as long as battery technology can improve and make up for the extra power requirements, or screen technologies such as power-saving OLEDs (organic light emitting diodes) can become more cost efficient.

But until then, let’s not overdo it with the bizillion-function phones. If I want a laptop, I’ll buy a laptop. Don’t pee in my swimming pool, people. I don’t swim in your toilets.

E-mail Esposito at resposito@media.ucla.edu