The Palm i705 and the RIM 957 are direct competitors, with one obvious difference. The Palm i705, pictured in Figure C, is a touch screen device with a handwriting area supporting Graffiti notation.

FIGURE C


The Palm i705 is a solid workhorse of a PDA. Roll over picture for a larger image.

The RIM 957 (pictured in Figure D), meanwhile, doesn't support handwriting or have a touch screen. Instead, it sports the famous (or perhaps infamous due to numerous legal disputes) curved RIM keyboard.

FIGURE D


The RIM 957 features the curved RIM keyboard. Roll over picture for a larger image.

Palm brings along a tremendous software bundle (DataViz Documents to Go, a Web browser, AOL Instant Messenger), and all the features of Palm OS. Like the RIM 975, the Palm i705 is locked into a specific network, in this case Palm.Net, and also uses a non-standard type of Palm OS application (the Palm Query Application or PQA) to interface with applications and data over the wireless network. Both RIM and Palm have coverage in roughly 260 metropolitan areas across the U.S.

One part PDA, one part phone, two parts fun
The Danger Hiptop, pictured in Figure E, is a device that appears to have an identity crisis, but this doesn't seems to be a problem for resellers like T-Mobile, or for users, whether they are consumers or professionals.

FIGURE E


The Danger Hiptop is a PDA, a mobile phone, and an MP3 player with the look and feel of a digital camera. Roll over picture for a larger image.

The device is a PDA, a mobile phone, an MP3 player, and it not only has a digital camera look and feel but sports a plug-in CCD camera.

Above all, this device is designed for pure messaging, so much so that it has the worst mobile phone interface of the PDA/phone devices I looked at. But what it lacks in phone integration it more than makes up for in messaging. The generous horizontal swivel display and large keyboard are perfect for SMS, email, and Instant Messaging. The Hiptop has the best messaging interface of all the devices I reviewed.

Although Danger doesn't officially market the product to business users, I talked to one enthusiastic professional user who uses a Hiptop for business email and Instant Messaging. Deployments of products like IBM Lotus Sametime and MSN Messenger on corporate networks make the ability to use Instant Messaging efficiently on a mobile device more important for business users. On the other hand, the Hiptop doesn't synchronize with the desktop and lacks applications.

Overall, I think the Hiptop is an innovative device for messaging, but IT departments will find it difficult to deploy to business users without desktop PIM integration.

How the devices stack up
While the Handspring Treo and the Siemens SX56 are cutting edge PDA/phones, the Palm i705 and RIM 957 are straightforward email oriented devices. The Danger Hiptop is promising, but it remains to be seen if this device can break into the corporate wireless email space, currently dominated by RIM. In terms of hardware comparisons, I broke down the devices in terms of technologies and core features like display and capacity, as you can see in Table A.