Despite the sheer volume of smartphones on the market, there are really only two types; those that do entertainment well and those that do business. The classic example that springs to mind is the difference between the Nokia N95 and thr Nokia E71. The E71 is actually quite a good entertainment device with decent video playback (no idea why some think this feature does not work well), but the music playback is very soft and the landscape screen does limit the gaming opportunities. In contrast, the N95 is great at music, great at video and especially great at gaming (Java, N-Gage etc.) Sadly it is not the best business device due to it's standard phone keyboard and therein lies the rub.

Manufacturers like Nokia, HTC, Apple and many others appear to be incapable of building a smartphone which does business equally as well as entertainment and vice versa. Almost all of the high-end solutions appear to deliberately miss out one or two features which would enable them to straddle the business / entertainment barrier. The E71 misses quality music playback and wide gaming support, the Blackberry phones have a 'terrible' web browser on board, the iPhone can be cumbersome for data entry and has some major ommisons such as copy/paste and MMS, the HTC Touch Diamond is a mix of lots of features that are all quite poor and so the list continues...

A device can be built that does it all. It's such a shame that nobody seems to be inclined to make it though..

Data entry on a smartphone or PDA has historically been close to pointless for anything other than quick emails, calendar entries and short bursts of text. So many devices have been produced that should in theory enable the user to write good length works anywhere, but they tend to fail dismally at this particular task.

The TyTN II and XDA Executive are two devices which follow the slide out keyboard form to produce a comfortable typing experience, but sadly they do not. Strangely, the front mounted keyboards seem to work better for longer periods of typing and the Treo and Nokia E71 have proved by far the quickest and most comfortable in this respect. It should still be noted that neither is ideal for ‘real’ work and both of today’s thoughts have been written on the E71 while waiting in a hospital. Strangely they both felt like full length articles, but are obviously shorted than you are used to on 247.

No matter what the manufacturers do, data entry on a smartphone sized unit will always be a lot slower than on a desktop. I guess they will one day make a phone that can read my mind, but I doubt I will live long enough to see that happen:)

the::unwired has reviewed the Samsung SGH-i900 Omnia Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional Smartphone- "The Samsung SGH-i900 Omnia is Samsung's latest Windows Mobile smartphone, featuring a touchscreen. For a Samsung Windows Mobile smartphone, the Omnia is quite unique because so far, Samsung was pretty focused on keyboard-centric Windows Mobile smartphones like the BlackJack/SGH-i600 or SGH-i780 which featured full QWERTY thumb-keyboards; while the i900 Omnia follows the trend to touchscreen centric smartphones. The i900 Omnia runs on Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional platform and features quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE but only singelband UMTS  at 2100 MHz and HSDPA (up to 7.2 Mbps) while HSUPA isn't supported. Furthermore, the SGH-i900 features Bluetooth 2.0+EDR including support of A2DP as well as WiFi b/g, inbuilt GPS and FM radio with RDS support.

The 3.2" touchscreen supports a quite uncommon resolution of 240 x 400 pixel (WQVGA) and automatically rotates between portrait and landscape mode, thanks to the inbuilt accelerometer. This works in all applications an modes and isn't limited to certain applications. Furthermore it provides a tactile feedback if the screen is touched. On the back side, the i900 Omnia sports a massive 5.0 megapixel autofocus camera with a flash light while the front facing camera supports QCIF only but it's only used for UMTS video telephony. Also massive is the inbuilt memory. In addition to the 128 MB of RAM and 256 MB of ROM which is used my Windows Mobile and the applications, the Omnia offers either 8 GB or 16 GB inbuilt flash memory for storing data; however, this inbuilt memory can be expanded again with microSD/microSDHC cards which are supported up to 16 GB..."

SmartReg for Pocket PC has been updated to v3.5- "Forgotten that registry change you made last week that you really wish you'd never made? Not a problem if you made the change with SmartReg. Simply look in the change history list, view the change and then undo it!

SmartReg is the professional Windows Mobile registry editor. It contains all the features you would expect of a standard registry editor PLUS complete historical change log, comprehensive undo/redo and regular expression searching."

• Complete historical change log - Records all changes you make to the registry using SmartReg and allows you to undo or redo those changes days, weeks or even months later!
• Comprehensive undo/redo facility for all operations.
• Powerful Find and Find All facilities, optionally using regular expressions
• Create, edit, rename and delete both keys and values.
• Full Cut, Copy and Paste support for both values and keys. Will copy and paste a full sub-key structure, including all values at each sub-key level.
• Store frequently used keys in the favourites list for quick access
• Import and export data in windows RegEdit format.
• Enter DWord values in decimal, hexadecimal or binary.
• Easily add and modify binary values using the built-in binary editor. Edit other value types as raw binary data.
• Menu options for Parent Key, Root Key, First Sibling and Last Sibling. Allows quick navigation through the key heirarchy.
• Supports MoDaCo AppToDate for automatic online upgrades (full version only).

The  CIA World Factbook 2008 for PPC has been reduced by 66% to only $9.99. Having said that, I am pretty sure there are many free ways to get this legitimately.

CIA World Factbook for PPC. Data for more than 270 countries and territories by the Central Intelligence Agency. Based on the latest 2008 data!

The following categories of information are covered for over 270 countries:

* Flag Graphic
* Map Image
* Background
* Geography
* People
* Government
* Economy
* Communications
* Transportation
* Military
* Transnational Issues 

From pdamill- "It's been awhile since we released our last new title, but for a very good reason. Our latest title, Jaybot's Catchy Cadence is an amazing game, and it's now ready to play!

Not only that, but it's FREE and available! for PC and Windows Mobile devices! But don't worry, Free doesn't mean we didn't spend over a year in development and pour our hearts and souls into the game.

We did, quite a bit, in fact. We just thought it was so darn exceptional, that everyone and anyone should be able to experience it.

What the heck is the game? It's a Rythm-Music-Action Game designed by our in-house maestro Game-Designer-Musician, Jason Surguine (aka Jaybot) with over 12 separate games and songs to play along with! Follow the link here to find out more!

Because Escaping from Sharks, Chopping Wood as a Lumberjack, acing a Dance Competition, Jumping Robots in a futuristic society, Sword Swinging, playing Tennis, making Sandwiches and Marching to the Beat (plus many more things) are tons of fun.  We know."

The world of mobile internet devices is set to explode in the next four years says chip maker Intel.

Research carried out for the company suggests portable net-enabled devices will grow to 1.2 billion by 2012 as the need to be connected increases.

Intel's predictions were unveiled as it launched a series of chips designed for portable web-browsing gadgets.

"The demand is there and the need is there and our technology can meet those needs," said Intel's Gadi Singer.

Alongside an explosion in mobile web-using devices, Intel estimated that 100 million households will also be watching IPTV by 2011.

"The fact that people want to be on the internet all the time means they will be looking for the ability they have today say at their desk and to have that anytime and anywhere," said Mr Singer, head of Intel's mobility group.

"That creates the demand for new devices and more sophisticated devices with the computing power and connectivity presenting a major opportunity." More at BBCi.