T-Mobile MDA III smart phone

The heir to the MDA lineage retains its noble pedigree

Similar-looking to its predecessor and much the same as O2's Xda IIs (T3 108, 4/5), this smart phone reveals a few differences when you pick it up and the top half slides smoothly upwards to reveal a hen-peck qwerty keyboard. It's not the easiest to use at first, but you soon get the hang of those tiny keys (the ridges are a nice touch), and two thumbs beats one when it comes to inputting more than a phone number. Though the slide is firm, we did notice that it starts to produce rub marks after a bit of use. Weight's also an issue.

Quick keys for calendar, contacts, messages, Internet and Start menu mean that one-handed navigation without using the embedded stylus or touch screen is easy, though it's surprising there isn't one for "phone". Buttons on the side for camera or voice recording are also well placed, as is the SDIO memory card slot at the top.

Like the MDA II, this runs Pocket PC Phone Edition and has mini versions of Word and Excel on tap, along with the ClearVue PDF viewer and KSE Truefax, plus full Internet browsing with Internet Explorer - pretty much everything you need to carry your office in your pocket. Connection-wise, it's pretty much got all the bases covered, with tri-band, Wi-Fi (802.11b), Bluetooth and infrared. And all that's before we even mention the quality of the 0.3-megapixel video camera and fast 400MHz processor.

Overall, this is one of the best-specced smart phones available, and if it's a tad bulky, it easily makes up for it in high-powered functionality.