T-Mobile MDA Mail review

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Verdict:

Review Date: 17 May 2007

Price when reviewed: £0

Supplier: http://www.t-mobile.co.uk

Reviewed By: Chris Finnamore

Our Rating 5 stars out of 5

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Review
Specs

The MDA Mail has a full QWERTY keyboard, but it's the only one of the larger smartphones here without a touch screen.

It feels very expensive, though. It's by far the thinnest phone in the group, and its matt rubber back makes it very comfortable to hold. You control the phone using the directional keypad and soft keys to select options from the main menu. The icons are large and clear, but with only two lines of icons on the screen at a time you spend a lot of time scrolling up and down to find the one you want.

The QWERTY keys are small but well spaced, so typing is easier than it is on Sony Ericsson's P990i. We made more errors than when using Palm's Treo 680, though. Like O2's XDA Graphite, the MDA Mail comes with third-party software for viewing Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, but it also supports PDFs. It can't edit Word or Excel documents, though.

The MDA Mail has no 3G or wireless networking, so it isn't best suited to heavy web browsing. With no stylus, you have to use the directional keypad to scroll through links on the page, and the browser is slow when displaying lots of images. Call quality is poor, and call recipients complained of static, but the battery lasted for over 21 hours in our test.

The MDA Mail is more stylish than a BlackBerry and cheaper than Palm's Treo 680. The MDA Vario II is more powerful, but the smaller Mail is easier on your wallet and your pockets.

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