HP iPaq Data Messenger Windows Mobile smartphone

Fugly

There's a 5x digital zoom and a panorama shot option which allows you to stitch five pics together for a 180° wide shot, which you can also do vertically. Maximum resolution is 2048 x 1536 pixels and pictures were OK in decent light, though colours tended to be a bit washed out.

Video was quite poor, as is often the case, the camera struggling with movement and all too prone to smearing of moving images.

Use it for navigation - if you can get the GPS to work...

The default media player is Windows Media Player, though you can download others. It will display cover art but the sound, whether through the on-board loudspeaker or supplied headphones, is underwhelming, with a distinct lack of bass oomph. You can add your own headphones, but they'll need to have a 2.5mm jack - catch up, HP! - or there's the option to use wireless Bluetooth headphones.

There's 256MB of memory available for your videos and tunes, though you can boost this by up to 8GB with Micro SD cards. You'll need to remove the back to get to the slot but at least it's not under the battery, so you can hot-swap.

There's an A-GPS receiver on board supported by Google Maps, plus a 30-day trial of voice navigation software. Unfortunately, we couldn't get it to work on our test sample and it was repeatedly unable to find our location.

Office Mobile is also present, allowing you to create and view Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. Each app gives you the option of a tiny on-screen keyboard, which you're unlikely to favour over the slide-out variety.

Battery life wasn’t terrible but not particularly impressive either, we didn't quite make two days of moderate use before we had to recharge, though we did have Wi-Fi on constantly, and you can make use of Windows' power-saving settings to help it go a bit further.

Verdict

A couple of years ago, this would probably have seemed like a decently solid, well-specced smartphone. But the competition has moved on, raising the standards of both style and function, and the Data Messenger doesn't cut it on either front. ®

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