E-TEN M500 PDA phone

Great power and great destructibility.

Thanks to the bijou i-mate JAM, PDA phones went from always being the bridesmaid to picking out a ring. That set a new standard for being suitably sized without skimping on features, but sadly the E-TEN M500 represents a step backwards.

It's slightly bulkier than the i-mate (and its near-identical counterpart, the T-Mobile MDA Compact), while feeling slightly lighter and considerably more flimsy. There are a couple of small design quibbles too, such as a stylus that feels like it might drop out of its slot too easily and a fiddly little battery lock you need to activate before the device will power up.

Not that any of this means the M500 isn't a powerful multi-purpose tool. It has 130MB of memory on board and an SD card slot in case you need more space for storing pics and music. There's also a decent 1.3-megapixel camera, accessed by a button on the side, and pictures can be framed well on the 65,000-colour LCD. There's a built-in flash too, but we found it to be ineffective even in slightly low light, let alone semi-darkness.

The software package has a few surprises, though. As well as Pocket Word, Excel and Windows Media Player, there's ImageMaker and Voice Commander, which offers voice-control functionality activated via a dedicated button.

This, then, is a decently equipped Pocket PC phone - it's just a pity it's let down by poor build quality and design.