Our company is 20 years old this year and my boss has let me know that he wants to surprise all employees by giving them a PDA or smartphone, with the business catch being that they will have mobile access to company e-mail.

With me being the self-announced IT/telco boffin of the company he's let me in on the secret and asked me for advice.

He himself was thinking of the all-in-one Sony Ericsson P910i, which has a phone, GPRS, push e-mail, camera (photo/video), media player, and all the usual PDA stuff, running on Symbian 7, whereas I am leaning towards a regular PDA which, through Bluetooth, can be combined with our current GPRS phones.

Since I can be considered quite a n00b when it comes to handheld stuff, here are my questions to those blessed with knowledge: -

What does the push e-mail on the P910i entail? I can't find any specifics on the SE site, nor in various independent reviews. Does it involve BlackBerry client software? If so, will we need server software as well? And how is it different from the usual SMTP, POP3, or IMAP4 functionality found on PDAs?

Is the P910i any good, or does it try to cram too much into one thing while not being very good at any of its multitude of capabilities?

Is it more useful to have a PDA with WiFi capability than to have a smartphone with GSM/GPRS capability?

Which PDAs do what the 910i does (except 'phoning, of course) with the same or better quality but for less money?

I have a P900....

I also have access to two ipaq's and a palm, and a former Psion 3c and Revo user...

The P900 is all I need.

Alarm clock wakes me, then reminder alarm tells me when I need to set off on foot in order to catch my train.

I put my headphones on, and listen to my MP3's on the walk \ train, music being interupted with any calls. If the train is running late I'll sign onto MSN messenger and let someone in the office know.

On arrival in the office, I drop my P900 into it's cradle, and it synchronises with my email on my laptop.

During the day, any new contacts in outlook are added to my P900.. also any notes, to-do lists and calender entries.

I nip out at lunch and see a stretched Hummer limo, looks cool so I grab a pic of it.

Mid afternoon, an pic message arrives, usually ffelan sending me a pic of an engine thats *nearly* ready to go back in the car

At 17.20, I leave the office, phone is charged up and listen to MP3's walking to station.

When I get to the station, I check my email in case of any last minute problems before I leave the city, check brisky for amusing posts \ PM's, and sign into Yahoo messenger to talk to Sandra, letting her know if trains are delayed etc, and discussing whats for tea I send her a pic over yahoo messenger of the cold raining station, she has sympathy and extra hugs waiting for me because of this

I then sit on the train, listening to my music.....

Get to my station, and let Sandra know I'm 10mins away on foot, so kettle is put on and a mug of tea is waiting for my return.

It does everything I need.

I'm not sure how the "push" email works, as I "pull" it down, I would assume (like blackberry) it needs some sort of exchange server plug-in.

P900 too here - as above - great kit.

P910 better again.

I've got a Blackberry for business use, there is no contest if E-Mail is your killer app. As for smartphone/PDA, I've also got a work iPAQ 6340 which is a PDA with built in cellphone, pretty neat.

Dave.

Get an XDA2-S (O2) or MDA-III (as TMobile call them).

Proper touch screen PDA with slide out keyboard which you can run the Blackberry client on (if you really need to )

Also doubles as a phone, looks cooler than any Sony or Blackberry and runs a proper mobile OS - ie Win mobile 2003.

Without a shadow - P900,wins hands down.

I've done the GPRS and iPaq route - what a pain having to carry and charge 2 bits of kit.

P900 does it all takes less room and can as Ian said provide some fun 2

Oh, and a comment from collegues that use blackberry - colour screen of latest blackberry is awful compared to P900, and attachements are downloaded a screenfull at a time - P900 can just open word \ excel docs in one sweep.

Oh, and it's got 3d V-rally

For a phone, it is chunky, but it's a lot smaller than PDA's!

Thanks for the input, guys. Right, so the P900/910i is a good device of its kind. But how cumbersome is it to simply use it as a phone? Too big or alright?

I've got a Blackberry for business use' date=' there is no contest if E-Mail is your killer app. As for smartphone/PDA, I've also got a work iPAQ 6340 which is a PDA with built in cellphone, pretty neat.

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No XDAs available in NL anymore since O2 sold its Dutch branch but this 6340 sounds interesting, it having a phone and GPRS to fill the WiFi blank spots. For me, WiFi is one of the major perks of a PDA compared to a smartphone.

Anyone know how it compares to the P910i in size and user-friendliness?

P900 won me over the xda type phones as you can put it in your pocket as per a normal phone. Its not cumbersome, easy to use, best ever.

Glad i bought it over the xdas now.

Symbian is growing fast - with applications like tomtom coming out for it now. Gets my vote anyday.

You could look at the iMate Jam. I have not used it personally but it is a windows based mobile/PDA and it is smaller than a P900/910.

Regards

How about T-mobile's brand new MDA Compact? It's much smaller than the previous MDAs or P910, not really much bigger than a normal phone :eek: and is a full windows PPC PDA

Thanks for the added input, now it's time to simply try out some of the stuff myself.

As for the T-Mobile thing - we're contracted to another provider for some time to come, so that's a no-go, I'm afraid...