musical future for phones analyst bill thompson has seen the future and it is in his son s hands.  i bought my son max a 3g phone  partly because they are so cheap and he needed a phone  and partly because i am supposed to know about the latest technology and thought i should see how they work in real life. after using it for a while i am not at all tempted to get rid of my sonyericsson p800 smart phone. that has a relatively large screen  even if it does only have slower gprs access to the network. i can read my e-mail  surf the web using a proper browser and write stuff using the stylus on its touch screen. last week someone e-mailed me a document that had been compressed into a zip file  and i was pleasantly surprised to discover that my phone even knew how to decompress it for me. by contrast the confusing menus  complicated keyboard and truly irritating user interface of max s 3g phone simply get in the way  and i did not see much value in the paid-for services  especially the limited web access. the videos of entertainment news  horoscopes and the latest celebrity gossip did not appeal  and i did not see how the small screen could be useful for any sort of image  never mind micro-tv.  but then max started playing  and i realised i was missing the point entirely.  it is certainly not a great overall experience  but that is largely due to the poor menu system and the phone layout: the video content itself is compelling. the quality was at least as good as the video streaming from the bbc website  and the image is about the same size. max was completely captivated  and i was intrigued to discover that i had nearly missed the next stage of the network revolution. it is easy to be dismissive of small screens  and indeed anyone of my generation  with failing eyesight and the view that  there s never anything worth watching on tv   is hardly going to embrace these phones. but just as the world wide web was the  killer application  that drove internet adoption  music videos are going to drive 3g adoption. with vodafone now pushing its own 3g service  and 3 already established in the uk  video on the phone is clearly going to become a must-have for kids sitting on the school bus  adults waiting outside clubs and anyone who has time to kill and a group of friends to impress.  this will please the network operators  who are looking for some revenue from their expensively acquired 3g licences. but it goes deeper than that: playing music videos on a phone marks the beginning of a move away from the  download and play  model we have all accepted for our ipods and mp3 players. after all  why should i want to carry 60gb of music and pictures around with me in my pocket when i can simply listen to anything i want  whenever i want  streamed to my phone  oh - and of course you can always use the phone to make voice calls and send texts  something which ensures that it is always in someone s pocket or handbag  available for other uses too. i have never really approved of using the internet protocol (ip)  to do either audio or video streaming  and i think that technically it is a disaster to make phone calls over the net using  voice over ip .  but i have to acknowledge that the net  at least here in the developed western countries  is fast and reliable enough to do both.  i stream radio to my computer while i work  and enjoy hearing the bizarre stations from around the world that i can find online but nowhere else. i am even playing with internet telephony  despite my reservations  and i appear on go digital on the world service  streamed over the web each week. but 3g networks have been designed to do this sort of streaming  both for voice and video  which gives them an edge over net-based ip services. the 3g services aren t quite there yet  and there is a lot to be sorted out when it comes to web access and data charges. vodafone will let you access its services on vodafone live! as part of your subscription cost but it makes you pay by the megabyte to download from other sites - this one  for example. this will not matter to business users  but will distort the consumer market and keep people within the phone company s collection of partner sites  something that should perhaps be worrying telecoms regulator ofcom. but we should not see these new phones simply as cut-down network terminals. if i want fast access to my e-mail i can get a 3g card for my laptop or hook up to a wireless network. the phone is a lot more  and it is as a combination of mini-tv  personal communications device and music/video player that it really works. there is certainly room in the technology ecosystem for many different sorts of devices  accessing a wide range of services over different networks. 3g phones and ipods can co-exist  at least for a while  but if i had to bet on the long term i would go for content on demand over carrying gigabytes in my pocket. or perhaps some enterprising manufacturer will offer me both. an mp3g player  anyone   bill thompson is a regular commentator on the bbc world service programme go digital.