It's the most logical collaboration since toast and marmite, so it's no surprise that a steady trickle of mobile phones with PDA capability are hitting the High Street.

Despite being smaller than the average PDA, the rectangular shape of Motorola's Accompli 008 means it looks less like a phone and more like a PDA. Its flip-up lid protects a touch-sensitive screen rather than a number pad.

The screen measures 40mm wide by 54mm high and looks cramped when you are using the character recogniser and viewing a full day's calendar. You'll definitely need to scroll down to see a full day's appointments. If only Motorola had used a slightly smaller font, it would have got more into the screen at once.

Handwriting recognition

There is a drawing pad for making handwritten notes directly on to the screen, but if you'd rather write directly, the clever handwriting recognition system is one of the best we've seen. Individual letters are written on to the screen normally, so there is no need to learn a new way of writing, as with Palm's Graffiti system.

As you write a letter, the software converts it to text; but in case it chooses wrongly, it offers a range of similar letters you can tap to select. This makes correcting errors really fast.

Moreover, you get two spaces to write into, the idea being that by the time you've written a letter in the second space, the first has been recognised. The result is super-fast text entry.

Applications

Whatever else you are doing, a phone icon is always present on the screen, so you can easily make a call.

The other applications are arranged into four groups. Among them is an address book, text messaging manager, email application, diary, to-do list, alarm clock, note taker, calculator, currency converter, unit converter and ringtone composer.

Menu system

On the plus side, Motorola has made a very good job of its menu system. Already noted is the fact that you have always got access to the phone icon with which to make calls. There are icons at the top and bottom of the screen for specific application functions, but also a tiny icon that opens an application-specific menu that lets you access the key features.

Synchronising data

It's one thing having a smart phone like the Accompli 008 in your pocket and editing its contents to add a single address or phone number, but getting the bulk of your data onto your PC is quite another. To do this and synchronise your data, TrueSync Desktop is supplied. Starfish, the company that provides this for Motorola, used to make a Personal Information Manager application called Sidekick and the Desktop software is a development of that with a text messaging manager and synchronisation tools added on. It's really easy to use, but synchronisation software for Microsoft Outlook users is supplied as well.

Information can be synchronised using either serial or infrared connection. There is 2Mb of memory on-board for data and any third-party applications you might want to download.

The Accompli 008 is dual-band GSM like most on the market but is also GPRS-capable, which is a boon for Wap fans who subscribe to Orange. The lithium ion battery provides up to 145 hours of standby time and up to 270 minutes of talk time.

Summing up

There are some bad points. The screen is greyscale rather than colour and you can't use external storage device media, which is very limiting.

That said, the Accompli 008 is a great little phone with a good PDA attached. It comes with some neat Desktop software and importantly, as these things go, it doesn't cost the earth.

Contact
Motorola: 0870 9010 5555 www.motorola.co.uk

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