For our first IT kit reviews we have picked some current mobile devices and tested them for usability. In other words, less about how powerful they are, more of whether you can use them without tearing your hair out.

If you want to see specific devices reviewed in future issues, e-mail: Rupert White at rupert.white@lawsociety.org.uk.




Young pretender: MDA Vario - 8/10


T-Mobile's Vario, sold by O2 as the XDA Mini S, wins out in this group test for one simple reason: it manages to combine phone functionality, a thumb-usable slide-out keyboard and Windows Mobile software without feeling like an unsuccessful compromise.


This is much harder than it sounds - the latest BlackBerry's keyboard is just too compressed to use easily, and the SPV M5000's keyboard manages the impressive feat of being both too big and too small. After all, if you are buying a mobile device to do anything more than write text messages on, you will want to actually type on the thing without needing fingers like Cruella De Vil (long, pointy and extremely nimble).


The Vario's keyboard is a simple, intelligent solution to a thorny problem - it feels sturdy, it is easy to use and it takes up minimal space in the device.


Like other machines (including the M5000 below) running Windows Mobile, you can use Word and other stripped-down Office products as well as Internet Explorer, plus applications such as GPS programs. But these advantages are hardly unique, and do not mark the Vario out. Windows Mobile has quite a few very annoying idiosyncrasies that BlackBerry users will not necessarily warm to, for example.


What marks the Vario out is its clean solution to a thorny form-factor problem: how to put something more capable than a BlackBerry into a device the size of a phone without making you wish e-mail and the Web had never been invented.





The champion: BlackBerry 8700 - 7/10


The IT industry is a fickle beast, and always needs to find another reason to sell another version of something everyone likes to keep profits rolling in - hence the BlackBerry 8700. It does everything the 7200s and the 7700s do, with some interesting new bells and whistles. It is a little thicker but narrower in the hand, which must be to make it into a more one-handed affair.


Now, BlackBerrys get used one-handed a lot, at which the 8700 excels. But nearly all the problems with it stem from this narrowing. If we needed a phone that wanted to be a BlackBerry, we would take the 7100. Not that there are no reasons to upgrade - a faster processor, double the memory, a better screen and an accurate ambient light sensor are surprisingly useful, and there are three new keys on the front for phone functions.


But there the problem of product crossover comes up again. Is it a phone? Is it a BlackBerry? Three new keys are not what a new BlackBerry needed - a little Sony Ericsson-style joystick is what it needed. Combine this with a compressed keyboard that is more difficult to use than the 7200 you know and love, and you have what feels like a near miss.


This is a real shame - the 8700 is a faster, richer and cooler experience than its predecessors. It is also quad-band, meaning you can use it anywhere in the world, and it comes with EDGE, a standard for high-speed data well established in the US. EDGE is being rolled out here which will make the BlackBerry blisteringly fast. But that keyboard lets it down. No doubt people will buy it, but they should pre-book some RSI appointments.





Fat controller: SPV M500 - 5/10


Orange's version of HTC's Universal machine is, sadly, a bit of a letdown. Other reviewers have called its twin machines, for example O2's XDA Exec, a breakthrough, and grew to love Orange's version too, but not us. Why? Two reasons.


One, you will look like you need sandals, a beard, and job title akin to Network Manager while you use it. It is big enough when held to the ear to make you fear you have slipped back in time to 1996, and clipped to your belt you rapidly begin to feel like Batman. Two, it is another piece of kit that tries to be all things to all people, which never works. As a result, usability suffers.


The keyboard on the SPV is just too big to use properly with your thumbs, but not big enough to use as a proper touch-type keyboard. Its layout is far from helpful too, with worse mistyping problems than we faced with the BlackBerry 8700. Like the 8700, the SPV also has a light sensor it uses to turn on its keyboard backlight, but this only seems to work if you are actually in the dark.


The clever clamshell-with-a-twist design mirrors 'tablet' laptops. It is a neat solution, but in reality using the SPV in 'tablet' mode was irksome. Without a keyboard to use, you are reduced to using it as if it were a Palm Pilot, at which point you might wonder why you are not just using a Palm.


The plus points seem legion: WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity alongside GSM, GPRS and UMTS (3G) mobile data; bags of memory and two cameras. But who cares? If you want to write, browse and communicate properly on the move, buy a laptop and a 3G mobile phone with Bluetooth.