Smart phone/all in one advice?

chriserenity

Hi All,

Looking for a bit of advice. My mobile contract just ran out so I'm shopping around for a good deal. Ideally I'm looking for a pocket pc/.pda (i think) rather than a phone where I can:

• Send and receive email (i have a popbox business email)
• Draw CAD floor plans
• Take photos (optional)
• Use the thing as a phone on a contract.

Does such a wonderous item exist/anyone have any experience or advice?

Is this what a Blackberry is? I looked on their site but it didn't say anything about using it as a .pdf e.g. to use the mobile agent.

I've used e2save with a modicum of success in my last mobile contract so i guess the above with a similar setup would be great.

Cheers.

Cavey

chriserenity wrote: »

• Draw CAD floor plans

I don't get your request. My experience with CAD has usually involved a fairly hardcore computer in order to accelerate the 3D rendering of the design as well as working in high resolution, both of these are things I wouldn't expect to find on a mobile device.

That said, the only phones I can think of that would be capable of coming close to this would be those running Windows Mobile. (A quick google finds the third party software which is able to do CAD, it doesn't come as standard).

The most common phone of this type is currently the HTC Kaiser (aka TyTn II aka Vodafone v1615 aka O2 Stellar aka T-Mobile Vario III etc...), but the forthcoming HTC Diamond (aka Orange/O2/etc... Touch Diamond, aka T-Mobile MDA Compact IV etc...) might be more interesting - you lose the keyboard but gain a VGA screen.

However, if I were trying to CAD on the go I'd probably opt for something with a bigger screen, perhaps a laptop, as project work is just annoying on hand-helds.

As for blackberrys, I can't quite figure out what they are for. I just cannot find even one feature that sets them apart from any other phone (and I do not count "ability to operate with a Blackberry server" as a feature - there are other systems that don't require you to fork out £x0000 so people can have email on the go which are easier to use and generally more reliable) while I can usually find at least one feature that other phones have that is either better than or absent in a Blackberry.

But then maybe one of the other forum users can enlighten me as to what is so useful about a Blackberry.