The existence of Sprite Archie raises an interesting question: Why don't high-end smartphones and PDAs back up their call and text logs by default?

It's understandable that models meant for "emerging markets" don't do this, since they're designed to be as simple as possible any way. But, for gadgets that can copy almost all of their onboard data to a computer or other device, I think extending this functionality to the activity log should become standard.

Right now, most (if not all) smartphones and PDAs lose their activity log once they lose power or are resetted. At the very least, giving customers a chance to save this information before its lost forever will give them a record with which they can contend billing mistakes.