Review Windows Mobile smart phones have traditionally been the workhorses of the smartphone world – capable, versatile, but never likely to win any beauty contests. On the face of it, HP's brace of new iPaq handsets - the Voice Messenger, and this, the Data Messenger - would seem to fit all too neatly into that description.

HP's iPaq Data Messenger: fugly?

Perhaps we've been spoiled by recent models from HTC. It broke the mould and produced handsets which look good and are fun to use, as well as delivering all the practical work stuff. But the basics, especially with a fairly hefty price tag attached, just don't seem to be enough anymore.

The Data Messenger is clearly intended as a business device, so it's excusable that style wouldn't necessarily be the first consideration, though the chrome flashes that break up the glossy black plastic casing have a certain appeal. But practicality is important for work and play alike, and this brick of a device is much more like a charm-free smartphone of old, weighing in at a hefty 160g and measuring a chunky 114 x 57 x 17mm.

Much of its size can be attributed to the slide-out Qwerty keyboard - which distinguishes it from the Voice Messenger - but others have managed to add such a useful component while keeping their handsets pocket-friendly.

Around the sides are volume buttons, camera shutter, messaging shortcut and screen lock buttons, plus a ringer on/off switch and a sturdy telescopic metal stylus. At the back, there's the 3.1Mp camera with an LED flash, all surrounded by a self-portrait mirror.

Beneath the screen are call start and stop buttons, a navpad and two touch-sensitive soft-menu keys, one for the Windows Start menu, the other for OK. The navpad deserves special mention, since it's the first example we've seen of an optical controller. There's a camera inside that measures your thumb's movements over it, like an optical mouse in reverse. It seemed sensitive enough and worked fine in practice.

A decent-sized touchscreen

The touchscreen is a decently sized, 3in offering with 320 x 240 resolution and 65,000-hue colour palette. Standard fare in other words, but nothing wrong with that. Considering the size of the screen, it's a shame that the virtual numeric keypad is so cramped, due in part to the inclusion of unnecessary buttons. Why do you need a talk button on screen when you've already got a physical one on the front of the phone?

HTC may have created its own interface to lie on top of the powerful but awkward and pernickety Windows Mobile, but there are no such fripperies here. This is meat and potatoes Windows Mobile 6.1 – not particularly intuitive, and you'll need the stylus - unless you've got very pointy fingers - to find your way around. It's not just the Windows menus either, the touchscreen wasn't as sensitive as we'd have liked, and we often found ourselves reaching for the stylus when we couldn't get it to respond to our thumb.

Not a fast runner

To make matters worse, the 528MHz Qualcomm 7201A Processor didn't seem particularly adept at handling multiple applications and we found it tended to be a bit slow and clunky when switching between apps.

The keyboard slides out to the right, and the screen resolution automatically switches from portrait to landscape when it does. Given the chunky proportions of the handset, the keyboard seems surprisingly small, and while the keys are of a nicely tactile rubberised plastic, they're flush with each other and not particularly easy to find with your thumbs. It's not bad, it's just that there's better out there, not least HTC's S740 and even Sony Ericsson's flawed Xperia.

Four lines with 41 keys means you've got pretty much everything you need up front, including direction arrows, though the @ symbol takes two presses, and while there are $ and € symbols, you'll need to dig into the menus to find that quaint little British £ sign.

Email accounts, however, are easy to set up, and you'll only need your address and password for most platforms.

Its browsing experience is rewarding

Fortunately, browsing on the Data Messenger is a rewarding experience. Opera is the default browser, although Internet Explorer is also available should you feel the need, and there's a fast HSDPA 3G connection of up to 7.2Mb/s if your network supports it – as fast as you can get nowadays, unless you use the Wi-Fi connection to hook up to broadband. You can zoom by double-tapping on the screen, and move around by dragging your thumb across the page.

The 3.1Mp camera may not be a major selling point for the Data Messenger, but it's actually not bad. It's not particularly quick to launch - it's ready to shoot in about four seconds from pressing the shutter button on the side - and the snapping speed isn't much less – not a good camera for capturing those blink-and-you'll-miss-'em moments.

There's a 5x digital zoom and a panorama shot option which allows you to stitch five pics together for a 180° wide shot, which you can also do vertically. Maximum resolution is 2048 x 1536 pixels and pictures were OK in decent light, though colours tended to be a bit washed out.

Video was quite poor, as is often the case, the camera struggling with movement and all too prone to smearing of moving images.

Use it for navigation - if you can get the GPS to work...

The default media player is Windows Media Player, though you can download others. It will display cover art but the sound, whether through the on-board loudspeaker or supplied headphones, is underwhelming, with a distinct lack of bass oomph. You can add your own headphones, but they'll need to have a 2.5mm jack - catch up, HP! - or there's the option to use wireless Bluetooth headphones.

There's 256MB of memory available for your videos and tunes, though you can boost this by up to 8GB with Micro SD cards. You'll need to remove the back to get to the slot but at least it's not under the battery, so you can hot-swap.

There's an A-GPS receiver on board supported by Google Maps, plus a 30-day trial of voice navigation software. Unfortunately, we couldn't get it to work on our test sample and it was repeatedly unable to find our location.

Office Mobile is also present, allowing you to create and view Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. Each app gives you the option of a tiny on-screen keyboard, which you're unlikely to favour over the slide-out variety.

Battery life wasn’t terrible but not particularly impressive either, we didn't quite make two days of moderate use before we had to recharge, though we did have Wi-Fi on constantly, and you can make use of Windows' power-saving settings to help it go a bit further.

Verdict

A couple of years ago, this would probably have seemed like a decently solid, well-specced smartphone. But the competition has moved on, raising the standards of both style and function, and the Data Messenger doesn't cut it on either front. ®

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