The myS-7 from Sagem is the company's first foray into the smartphone market with Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system. It's a little larger than the Xphone II but this marginally wider neck means that keys are just that tiny bit wider, and when your main mode of input is the keypad this tiny extra can work wonders.

The new Sony Ericsson P910i is the only true phone/PDA hybrid on review in this roundup so aesthetically it marries some of the largeness of a PDA with the slimness of a phone to end up with a unit that's just right: it's not too big and not too small.

The XDA (January 2003, page 41) and the XDA II have both done well in PC Authority reviews before, but our main complaint has been one of size: the XDA's are normal PDAs, but big phones. The XDA IIs still keeps a large touchscreen, but the unit is slightly slimmer and thinner than the previous models.

There's one thing that's immediately noticeable and annoying about the otherwise superb Xphone II: it's incredibly slow to turn on and boot up. We clocked about 72 seconds from pressing the power button to connecting to our service, with about a minute of that taken up by just booting the phone's OS.

The new Nokia Communicator  unfortunately evokes early '90s mobile phones: it has a long body, small display and is not something you could slip into a pocket. Closed, the 9500 is monstrous, but when you open its sideways clamshell design the 9500 comes into its own.

The key differentiator with the PDA2k over other PDAs is the whopping 128MB of RAM in-built for media and files. On top of this there's a separate 64MB ROM for the OS and an SD/MMC slot for further expansion.

18 million handsets sold as customers demand new features.

This is the second Smartphone we've reviewed (O2's Xphone, March 2004, page 55) but, unlike the Xphone, the Motorola MPx200 features a clamshell design. Smallish, black and sleek, the MPx200 is a Tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900 phone with GPRS which enables email, SMS, MMS and WAP capabilities.

Smartphone software developer continues market dominance.

New device not as clever as some think, says ABI Research.

Finnish firm responsible for 50 per cent of all smartphone sales.

Palm OS stays on life support longer than expected.

It’s not hard for other models to leave this one in the dust.

A great smartphone – particularly for ‘voice’ users. But we’d like to have seen the ‘touch’ technology run deeper.

A great smartphone – particularly for ‘voice’ users. But we’d like to have seen the ‘touch’ technology run deeper.

A stylish and rugged business-class smartphone with a huge choice of push-email clients available.

Impressive and free antivirus and antispyware package

The o2 Xphone is one of the first phones in Australia to use Microsoft's new embedded SmartPhone 2003 OS, which is a highly, highly pared down and customised version of Windows XP. Anyone familiar with the Windows interface shouldn't have much trouble operating this phone. Having said that however, it does take some getting used to when navigating the menu systems, but it doesn't actually take long to get up to speed.

Smartphone still using PVC and BFRs, claims environment group.