RIM BlackBerry 7100V

Access emails on this mobile munter

Roll on You've Got Mail 2. Forget about Hanks and Ryan sitting in front of PCs and desk lamps - the second one will have Scarlett Johansson and Jude Law reclining on picturesque beaches, reading and sending their emails using phones. And we'll have RIM - among others - to thank.

Not content with licensing its instant-email service to everyone from Nokia to Sony Ericsson, the company has just trounced its classic 7230 emailer with this, a handset you can talk on without looking stupid. Size-wise, it's a massive improvement on its predecessor - pocketable and comfy to hold against your face. And it's light too. Sadly, it's also got about as much sex appeal as a Marks and Sparks cardigan.

The ugliness isn't our only bugbear either, as the keypad is a real oddity. Arranged in a qwerty layout with two letters per key, it's hard to get the hang of - even after several weeks' use, we were still struggling. The rest of the hardware is pretty good. The colour screen is extremely bright and sharp, there's Bluetooth (for headsets only) and the jog-wheel is fast for getting around the interface.

And what an old-school interface it is! A few icons aside, the whole thing is mostly text-based and, though functional, feels as antiquated as a Spectrum text adventure game.

More encouragingly, the BlackBerry email service works brilliantly - mails drop onto the handset as soon as they've hit your POP3 or work mailboxes. Syncing your organiser info with Outlook on a PC is also easy and effective, and the battery will last you a good two to three days.

This emailer-cum-phone certainly isn't terrible, then. However, because of the ugly-stick design and the keypad, we'd recommend you look at a BlackBerry'd Sony Ericsson P910i, Siemens SK65 or Nokia 9300 instead.