i-mate JASJAR

I've had an i-mate JASJAR Smartphone for about 5 months now and it is excellent!

This is the best gadget I've bought in many years. There is nothing else on the market which contains the same features as a Jasjar.

I use wi-fi at home and at work so rarely need the 3G but it's nice to have it available when I need it. I'm not aware of anything else which has wifi, 3G and bluetooth.

The keyboard works well for me, but people with larger thumbs and fingers might struggle with it.

The battery life is shorter than other PDAs but I don't find that it runs out on me during the day. Even if it does, there's no need to worry about lost data since it saves to ROM. If you need to you can get a larger battery but this makes it even more bulky.

The internal memory seems to get used up very quickly and could be larger but saving things to a 2Gb SD card means that it's no problem.

Since I bought this, I've hardly used my laptop. I was using it to take minutes at a meeting in a cafe. It's very convenient to be able to wip a mini-laptop out of your pocket. At the end of the meeting, my colleagues asked me to email them the minutes, but, to their amazement, I had already done so.

If you're worried about looking like a dork when you talk into a brick then get a bluetooth headset.

My main concern before buying was that the clever swivel screen might be a weak point but it feels very sturdy and is the key to the success of this device because it enable you to hold it like a phone, use the phone keypad, hold it to your ear like a phone or just to view it like a normal PDA if you want to.

Basically, if you want something with these features, there is no alternative. It's a bit expensive but there are plenty of "unwanted upgrades" available from people who got it as an upgrade just to sell the phone. Mine cost £250.

The i-mate JasJar PDA is what I have been waiting for since the days of the Psion series 5. At last a PDA with a decent integrated keyboard - WooHoo!!! The keyboard includes some useful hot keys, and there is a tabbing device to avoid using the pen on the screen if you prefer not to.

The device also adds mobile phone facilities, but I can't imagine using it as a mobile phone because it is fairly bulky.

The 1.3 mega-pixel camera is good enough to take pics of flip charts / OHP slides during presentations etc...

The battery life isn't brilliant, but is charged by the supplied power adapter as well as the USB lead.

The wifi facility works very well, making the device useful for basic browsing needs, plus MSN Messenger.

Email includes sync with Outlook, IMAP, and POP email plus retrieval from Hotmail.

A cradle is not supplied at this moment, but I'm told it won't be long.