Itch in your palm?

GIZMO GALLERY

There's no need to see the dermatologist. Just head to the mobile store instead.

Blackberry 8120
Blackberry 8120 or better known as Pearl 2 is a direct descendent of the Blackberry Pearl launched last year. The refinements are more than just cosmetic. For one, the 50 mm width of the Pearl 8120 does not lend enough space for a QWERTY keypad, and Research in Motion (makers of Blackberry) have shied away from a standard phone-like keypad too.

What one gets is a system where two QWERTY characters share a single key. Just type away hitting a key once, regardless of the letter you want. The predictive engine guesses what word you want and you can use the roller button to select it, or continue typing. It does take a bit of getting used to. A spell checker can be run manually and checks emails automatically.

There are a host of other features that makes Pearl 2 a worthy upgrade. For instance, it has Wi-Fi. The digital camera has been enhanced from a 1.3 megapixel camera to 2 megapixel, and for the first time on a Blackberry video support has been included. There's also a flash for the camera.

You can also install the Facebook application, and post online, besides emailing or MMSing your friends. Better still, there is a 3.5mm jack so you can connect your own headphones.

It won't beat many dedicated music players, but it is very competent for a mobile phone at Rs 24,990. Pearl 2 does show that RIM is trying hard to break out of its 'businesses only' image, both design-wise and features-wise.

Palm Treo 750
Giving Blackberry Pearl 2 some competition is the Treo 750, which looks like any of Palm's other smartphones but has ground-breaking differences neatly tucked away. First, it runs Windows Mobile operating system (OS) "" something you never expected from Palm, as it has the credit of being a Microsoft competitor in the PDA and smartphone world.

A streamlined screen includes fast searching for contacts in your address book. Similar to the Treo 680, the Treo 750 has comfortable buttons and moving away from previous Treos, the 750 uses a miniSD card to expand its memory.

The Treo 750 is narrower than a typical Blackberry, and a Blackberry user would probably find its keyboard cramped by comparison. However, we found we could enter text at a reasonable speed by cradling the device in two hands and using the thumbs to type.

The Treo 750 is powered by a 300MHz Samsung CPU that, while not spectacularly snappy, gets the job done. With features like 128MB of RAM with 60MB of storage available to the user, which means that you can run more programmes simultaneously without slowing things down to a crawl is great for multi-taskers.

The Treo 750 ships with Pocket Outlook, which had no problems accessing mails from Gmail account via POP. The in-built audio quality is not very impressive and battery nets around four hours of heavy usage before cutting out.

At Rs 22,990 and a fold-able wireless Bluetooth keyboard that is offered free with the unit, Palm Treo 750 is an alluring deal.