Finally, PDAs you can watch movies on

If you've tried various PDA-phones, and come to the conclusion, rightly, that none is perfect since each one has that one extra facility the other doesn't, perhaps it's time to recognise that the edge also lies in the mobile technology you're using.

I've tried Tata Indicom's PDA-phone, the Ego, and it is by far the best PDA I've used, at least as far as anything concerning the internet "" such as browsing and even watching movies "" is concerned.

The Ego costs Rs 32,995, which is a bit steep considering the Sony Ericsson P910i costs below Rs 25,000. And, in terms of the ease of use, the P910i's superior, largely due to its jog dial which makes operations like message retrieval and searching for addresses much easier.

But, unlike other large-screen PDAs (it has a 3.5 inch screen) like HP's iPAQ range which have clumsy keyboards (the h6365 has a detachable one that makes the instrument a lot more bulky than it already is), the Ego has a sliding keypad.

You can slide half of the phone upwards to reveal a QWERTY keypad (the looks and the design are similar to IMate's PDA2K), much like the type the Blackberry has. I think it's a bit clumsy though, which makes it preferable to use the stylus even though it is a bother to use this for typing out even simple messages.

Once again, the P910i scores on this front as its keyboard is easy to use, apart from the fact that you don't need a magnifying glass to figure out which key is for which alphabet "" the P910i's detachable QWERTY keyboard (on the flipside of the normal keybad), though, falls in the same category of difficult-to-use.

The Ego comes with the usual extras like a camera with a flash "" the picture quality is not bad but then you get similar quality on must upmarket GSM phones too. You also get the other usual goodies now available in every phone "" an MP3 player, bluetooth connectivity and so on. A big plus is that the instrument comes with an extra battery "" so in case you finish off the 2 hours of talk time you can change to another.

And, as with all phones using a Windows platform, the Ego is convenient to use as its appearance is exactly the same as your desktop "" this is a drawback with the P910i or other competitors in the CDMA space like the Kyocera 7135 PDA that Reliance Infocomm offers at a price of Rs 35,000 which is based on a Palm operating system.

The Microsoft ActiveSync in the EGO helps in keeping tasks, calendar, e-mails, appointments and contacts updated with your PC or laptop. You can do the same in other phones like the P910i, but each time you transfer a file from your PC to the phone, it converts it to a different format.

The 128 MB memory also makes it superior to the P910i which has a 64 MB memory "" the external memory, which is expandable, is broadly similar for most phones of this genre. The iPAQ 6365 also offers a 64 MB memory to begin with, and it's time HP decided to upgrade its offering as it makes the phone a tad slow to operate.

Once you load in data onto the iPAQ, it has been known to get a bit slow "" users complain of how it can take anywhere between 3-10 seconds to answer a phone call after you've pressed the receive button. That may not sound like a lot, but is actually a long time for a phone.

The sound quality in the Ego is not of the same class as the P910i though, so downloading songs on it is perhaps of little use.

Like the iPAQ, the Ego is a delight to use for retrieving email. For some curious reason neither Sony nor service providers like Hutch are able to give a satisfactory explanation for, it is not possible to retrieve Gmail on a P910i "" given just how popular Gmail has become, this is something Sony Ericsson users need to be careful of.

The 910i's predictive text, again, is not as good as that Windows platforms like the iPAQ offer "" while writing on the screen, the iPAQ offers you the option of getting word prompts. So, if you say you want 3 word prompts, as soon as you write the letters 'th', you'll get prompts like 'than', 'though', or 'thought'.

The most striking feature of the Ego,of course, is that you can get really fast downloads and streaming on the internet. I downloaded movie clips on the Windows Media player and, apart from being amazingly quick, the viewing was tolerable, though the screen quality is not a patch on what Samsung offers. On occasion, the pictures did get frozen, but that's something that happens even on DSL-type broadband connections.

Since the company claims download speeds of 153 kbps, I checked this on McAfee's speedometer. The speeds varied from 75 kbps to over 125 kbps, which is comparable to DSL-broadband connections. If you're using GSM phones and a GPRS connection, don't even think of downloading movies as you could be doing it for hours.