More usability-based testing in this second round-up of mobile devices. Nothing comes close to beating the MDA Vario that won in the last round-up (see [2006] Gazette, 4 May, 14) but these devices may crop up in buying decisions. What do you want to see reviewed? E-mail rupert.white@lawsociety.org.uk and let us know.




Bags of character - BenQ P50 - 6/10


Had it not found itself up against a Nokia 9300 and the latest Sidekick, the P50 would have fared worse in this round-up. It is a device that is easy to like, despite how it looks and feels when first retrieved from its packaging. But it is weighty - at 170g you really know the P50 is in your hand. Is it a reassuring, Stella Artois kind of weighty? Sort of. It will definitely bag your suit lining, but then the Sidekick is far larger and the XDA Exec/SPV M5000 (see [2006] Gazette, 4 May, 14) needs its own stocky little porter.


With quad-band GSM, GPRS, WiFi, Bluetooth as well as infrared, it ticks most connectivity boxes. Put that together with a 1.3 megapixel camera, Windows Mobile, and BlackBerry-style keyboard and expandable memory, and you have a compact Windows phone/PDA that makes a decent stab at being all things to all users. It is not, however.


The keyboard is too small, the camera button is too easy to press, and the locking battery cover is just a pain. It does have a little joystick, and the screen is good. Also good is that you can use it with Skype, the Internet telephone software. Do not try this using GPRS - you will be in tears before anything worthwhile occurs. But use Skype over WiFi in your office or home system, connected to broadband, and you might get hooked.


In essence, the BenQ P50 does most things adequately. Put it next to the MDA Vario/XDA Mini S, or a BlackBerry, and it seems clumpy - but next to the SPV or the Sidekick, or even Nokia's Communicators, and it would have a good chance of ending up in your admittedly baggy pocket.





Time bandit - Nokia 9300 series - 5/10


The Gazette played with the older 9300, rather than the 9300i which incorporates WiFi, but the reality is that wireless LAN would not help the Nokia much. Adding WiFi to the 9300 allegedly also makes it a shade heavier than the BenQ P50 and chops out the battery life - hardly things to rave about.


But the real gripe is that the 9300 series feels behind the times. As a 'smartphone', there is much to say in its favour: you can use it like a phone and not look (much) like an idiot; the keyboard does not require the dexterity of a ninja; the internal screen is very good; there is BlackBerry server linkage; it has EDGE (enhanced GPRS), which the P50 does not have. But when closed, the 9300 is less easy to use than other Nokia phones - finding the in-call volume control without skim-reading the manual should be child's play. It wasn't. The speakerphone was good, however.


This un-Nokialike lack of usability extended elsewhere. The 'suite' of office software products running on the Symbian operating system is just oafish. The document program could not even open a rich text format file, which any word processing software should understand. The second big downside is the Web browser, which has its moments but is incompatible with many plug-ins and hated Gmail and Hotmail.


All in all, the Nokia smartphones look and feel a bit dated. If they had a bigger screen, more compatible software, 3G data speeds and touch-sensitive screens, they would be very attractive. Instead, they feel like something made for a science fiction movie. From around 1989.





Touchy - T-Mobile Sidekick II - 4/10


The low score the Sidekick II earns in this test is solely down to its inappropriateness to the legal user. The only real usability problem stems from the lack of a touch-sensitive screen (like the Nokia 9300) and the resultant need to open up the screen/body to dial phone numbers (very bad).


The Sidekick II is just not the kind of device lawyers would ever use for work; it is, however, exactly the kind of device any 15-year-old may use and, as such, may enter your peripheral vision at some point.


In use the Sidekick II is intuitive, simple, colourful and cheerful. But it packs AOL's Instant Messenger on board as well as a (relatively basic) Web browser, e-mail, phone, a very low-grade camera and the PDA world's weirdest screen opening system all into something not much bigger than a PlayStation Portable. There is GPRS but no Bluetooth and certainly no 3G data connection. There is no real 'productivity software', so you will not be editing those spreadsheets on the train with this baby. There is, however, a clever 'mirroring' between a bit of Web space and the machine, meaning it is automatically backed up.


There are many rumours about the upcoming Sidekick 3, but none of them contain even the faintest sniff of lawyer-friendly elements. But this is not the point of knowing a little about the machine. If you are buying a connected PDA for your personal use, it might be worth a look. If you wanted to buy a teenager a mobile device that will not cost the earth to buy or run, you need not look further than this.