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PDA Phone

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It has become very easy for people's lives to get cluttered. Sometimes this clutter is extraneous; other times it will be things that are absolutely necessary. Case in point: a PDA and a cell phone. Both are necessary--especially for businesspeople--to stay in touch when they're out of the office or away from home. Luckily, well designed smartphones unite these two things.

A smartphone (also called a PDA phone) combines the full functionality of a cell phone with that of a handheld PDA. Smartphones have only been on the market for a few years, but they have been gaining very quickly in popularity. Businesspeople, for obvious reasons, have especially taken to them. A PDA phone allows a person to stay in touch not only via telephone, but also via email. Plus, a smartphone, as opposed to a regular cell phone, possesses the computing power to run a fairly wide range of applications. These applications will typically allow the user to read and/or manipulate a range of documents in a variety of formats, like Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, or also Adobe Acrobat.

For a number of years, smartphones were produced by the companies that made PDAs. Now, however, more cell phone manufacturers are entering this burgeoning market. If the name of the manufacturer is well-known and trustworthy, chances are the product will do what it's supposed to do.

Among the first companies to manufacture PDA phones was PalmOne, the maker of the Palm Pilot. As such, PalmOne had an advantage when making the Treo 600, followed by the Treo 650. PalmOne had ample experience in making high-quality PDAs; grafting cell phone functionality onto that was merely the next logical step. This is the main reason why Treo phones have done so well in the market, followed closely by Blackberry phones.