My fiance expressed a desire the other week for a PDA-phone. I'm still not sure what the attraction was for her, but I suspect it may have had something to do with time spent playing on my Newton and how often I have it with me and use it.

Anyway. Options were almost scandalously limited. [link|http://www.myxda.com/|O2] appear to have a virtual retail lock in Sydney and Palm don't seem all that interested in being in the PDS-phone market. If you want just a PDA, then there is some choice. But make it a phone and you don't.

Choices were:
* O2 XDA II. OS: Windows Mobile 2003. All input is stylus-on-screen.
* O2 XDA IIs. Same as the XDA II but it had a thumb-board and we had to wait two weeks. Oh, and the OS was Windows Mobile 2003 SE.
* Palm Treo. OS: Palm OS. Key things in with the thumboard as there's no Graffiti area anymore.
* Something Symbian based.

The symbian devices were all hard to locate as they are all high-end mobile phones. Plus most of them are actually Videophones from [link|http://www.three.com.au/|3].

My fiance didn't like relying on a thumboard - part of the attraction was writing something into them. Palm have obviously dropped the ball here: there *wasn't* one with the Graffiti input area making the Treo600 was the *only* Palm device with a phone in it.

So we were stuck with no choice, as I said. The XDA II with Windows Mobile 2003 or wait a few months for the other manufacturers to re-appear in the retail market. Faced with that, she bought one anyway.

I'm not sure whether to be impressed or not. It's Windows and yet it's not. I warned my fiance that that may frustrate her, but it hasn't seemed to have bothered her. Some things, like the current battery level, are inexplicably buried (about 4 taps required). Other things are very well done - you can put any wav file on and make it your ringtone. And it likes freezing whilst it does some large task. A Windows legacy, if ever I've seen one.

What do people think?

Wade.

Edit: fixed a weecode.

I've noticed the battery life is dreadful. That prompted my comment about how easy it isn't to see how much is left. OTOH, the voice quality is quite good. I've spoken to her on it and it was fine.

Remember, too, that I had a Handspring Visor with a VisorPhone for 2 years or so. The biggest problem I had was that the ring was not very loud. The second biggest problem was that getting it repaired when I broke the antenna was not possible.

She hasn't found any real anoyances yet, apart from possibly the battery life. I'll check, though.

Wade.