Pity the poor Marine, thumbing through his email on his government-issued BlackBerry, with limited additional functionality. Out of one eye, he sees his friends in civilian life playing Fruit Ninja on their phones and enjoying the Always On experience that Wired.com’s Brian X. Chen so ably describes. Out of the other, he sees the Army getting closer to issuing soldiers their own smartphones. He thinks: there’s got to be a way the Corps can get me one of those.

As it happens, the Corps is taking its first tentative steps into the smartphone world. On Monday, it asked businesses for their thoughts about “commercially available or emerging trusted handheld platforms (i.e., smartphones, tablets, etc.).” The Marines aren’t rushing things. For now, they just want to “learn more about this emerging technology.”

It’s a start. So far, only the Army’s really made a concerted effort to leverage the rise of the smartphone.

If the Corps wanted to know about the benefits of loading applications that show battlefield maps, the placement of friendly forces, mission planning and other connection tools, its brass could walk down the Pentagon’s hallways and talk to the Army. The Army could even explain the benefits of its forthcoming app store, Marketplace, and expound on the relative merits of iOS versus Android.

But the Corps has two additional questions that the Army hasn’t answered. How to efficiently acquire a bunch of phones or tablets before the wheezing, bureaucratic Defense Department certification process renders them obsolete? And how to ensure a communications security for commercially available smartphones? It’s hoping businesses can explain.

For now, consider the Marines browsing through BestBuy. In addition to the size and weight questions that anyone in uniform has to consider when adding to their kit, the Corps wants to know about accessing “multiple commercial wireless interfaces (i.e., personal area network [PAN], wireless local area network [WLAN], wide area network [WAN]),” “installing and operating commercially available mobile operation systems” and an “inherent display to read in direct sunlight and no light,” for starters.

Tentative steps, to be sure. But as Army officers frequently remind, today’s military recruits have been using smartphones since puberty. They’re not content to take a big technological step backward as the price of enlistment. Maybe the Corps will be the next service to go always-on.

Photo: DoD