PHONE-PLUS

It has been said that big things come in small packages. Well, these so-called big things don’t come much smaller and feature-packed than the latest generation of PDA phones, that category of handheld devices that combine the seemingly complex tasks of information and data management with multimedia communications, and for some over-achieving models, imaging capabilities as well.

O2 Xda II mini

The smallest and newest of the genre is the P40,000 O2 Xda II mini, launched just last Monday in a formal press conference at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Makati City. The new Xda II mini is a tiny (58 x 108 x 18.1 mm) and trendy mobile phone that’s also a full-function PDA, digital camera and MP3 player.

Housed in a matte silver casing and not much larger than a deck of cards, the Xda II mini has all those features and more. Running on Windows Mobile 2003 Pocket PC Phone Edition (2nd edition) on an Intel PXA 272 Bulverde CPU running at 416MHz, this mini surely has something big to offer. It has 64MB of Flash ROM and an equal quantity of SDRAM, and you can even add more via the MMC/SDIO memory card slot. (It’s bundled with a 256MB SD memory card.) A five-way navigation pad enables a more user-friendly interface.

The Xda Ii mini comes pre-installed with a full suite of Microsoft applications – Word, Excel, PowerPoint Viewer, Outlook, etc. – as well as some custom O2 applications. It also has an Internet browser for mobile Web browsing. Yet another strength of this tri-band smartphone is a 1.3-megapixel digital camera. You can use Multimedia Album and Picture Editor to manage and edit images, and share them via MMS, e-mail, infrared, Bluetooth or wireless LAN using an optional WLAN card. Now that’s what you call connectivity!

If you can’t live without music, the O2 Xda II mini is an ideal device for you. It’s a complete digital entertainment center. With the latest version of Windows Media Player 10, you can chill to the world’s largest collection of digital music and MP3 files, or watch high-quality MPEG-4 video clips comfortably on the device’s 2.8" 65k-color TFT-LCD touch screen. It also supports MIDI, WAV and WMA formats. With these specs, it’s easy to see that the Xda II mini from O2 is the David among the Goliaths.

Treo 650

Those who gravitate toward Palm OS—based (as opposed to Windows OS-based) PDA phones have the Treo 650 from palmOne, the same company that’s been churning out all those handheld PCs from Palm Pilots to the newer Tungstens. (Back when it was still called Palm, the company also made a PDA phone, the Tungs-ten W.)

The Treo 650, which has a retail price of P39,900, is a GSM/GPRS/EDGE quad-band mobile phone that lets you e-mail, organize your schedule, play MP3s, take 1.3-megapixel pictures and shoot videos. It can connect wirelessly with your headset and a variety of Bluetooth-enabled devices, or synchronize with your desktop or laptop without wires getting in the way. It can even carry thousands of phone numbers with you, and dial any of them either from your contacts list, the on-screen dial pad, or by entering their name or number on the Treo 650’s QWERTY key-board.

Running on an Intel XScale processor with a 23MB user-available stored non-volatile memory (it comes with a MultiMediaCard/SD card expansion slot), the Treo 650 also lets you browse websites wirelessly.

HP iPAQ Pocket PC h6365

Yet another take on the Windows-based PDA phone is HP’s iPAQ h6365. It’s larger than the O2 Xda II mini but boasts quad-band connectivity, a detachable thumb keyboard for easier encoding, and an integrated wireless LAN 802.11b so you can websurf with it at your favorite wireless hot spot.

It’s also got Bluetooth, 64MB SDRAM (55MB user-accessible) and 64MB ROM and also runs on Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003 software for Pocket PC (Phone Edition). Additional memory capacity comes from a Secure Digital (SD) card expansion slot.

Its bright 3.5-inch trans-flective-type TFT screen with LED backlight boasts 65k colors and 240 x 320 resolution. Last but not the least is its VGA camera which has a 640 x 480-pixel resolution. The iPAQ h6365, which retails for just under P39,960, runs on a Texas Instruments’ OMAP 1510 processor.

BlackBerry 7730

Last but definitely not the least is Research In Motion’s (RIM) business-like BlackBerry 7730, a QWERTY-keyboard PDA phone that offers e-mail, SMS, Internet browser and organizer applications. The 7730 boasts a large, high-resolution (240 x 240) 65,000-color screen, a 16MB flash memory (plus 2MB SRAM) for application and data storage, a Java development platform based on open standards, integrated attachment viewing and one of BlackBerry’s strongest claims to fame, exceptional standby battery life of up to 10 days.

The tri-band 7730 operates on 900/1800/1900 MHz GSM/GPRS wireless networks, allowing for international roaming between North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Its keyboard features brilliant backlighting for easy navigation even at night. This 142-gram BlackBerry also allows downloading of games and personal productivity tools. Navigation is via thumb-operated trackwheel and ESC key.

The 7730 also features an embedded RIM wireless modem, an integrated speaker and microphone, as well as a hands-free headset. It runs on BlackBerry Desktop software and works with BlackBerry Enterprise Server supported by Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Domino.