We’re going to see more phones with built-in GPS (Global Positioning System) receivers, but at the moment there are only a handful doing the rounds. These include the Benefon Twig, Mio A701, O2 Xda Orbit, HTC P3300, the upcoming Nokia N95 and, of course, T-Mobile’s MDA Compact III. The convenience of having a GPS receiver embedded into the phone is obvious and edges these smartphones closer to challenging the functionality of their dedicated sat nav adversaries.T-Mobile’s MDA Compact III is the latest flame in the operator’s Windows-powered MDA Compact smartphone series, and arrives bundled with CoPilot’s Live 6 Pocket PC sat nav solution. Of course, this package is exclusive to T-Mobile and initial pricing is £60 on the Flext 35 (£35 per month), plus the Web’n’Walk £7.50 tariffs (£42.50 a month). For the £7.50 supplement, Web’n’Walk offers unlimited webbrowsing.

 

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Lower down this review, you’ll see our verdict on the CoPilot software and its sat nav performance, but for now, we’ll concentrate on the smartphone itself. As the name suggests, this smartphone is very compact for a PocketPC handset and compared to T-Mobile’s Vario range, it’s extremely pocket-friendly, although it’s quite wide and will still cause a slight bulge in the trouser pouch. However, at 16.8mm thick, it’s relatively trim and is by far the most stylish of T-Mobile’s range. It also sports a lovely grey tactile soft paint finish.

Powered by the latest Windows 5.0 Pocket PC Phone Edition OS, the user interface is T-Mobile-flavoured but doesn’t deviate much from past Windows PocketPC user interfaces.

The MDA Compact III offers three navigation techniques: a stylus-driven touch-screen; a trackwheel and a trackball (the last two are for one-handed operation). Touch-screen navigation works well and is more efficient and accurate, but for users who get frustrated at continually clamouring for the stylus, the alternatives are quite effective. The silver scroll may feel a bit loose, but it clicks along nicely and is perfect for trawling quickly through text and vast lists. The trackball is a new method, recently employed on the BlackBerry 8100 Pearl handset and is essentially a loose-fitted half-ball that responds to a brush or nudge from your thumb. It takes time to gauge its sensitivity (or lack of), but you may find yourself resorting to the other two methods at first. Stick with it, though, and you’ll soon master its sometimes skittish manner.

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Dedicated buttons for firing up the sat nav application and accessing the Web’n’Walk browser sit on the front control panel. The full HTML internet browser works well on the Compact III’s sizeable 2.8-inch screen and you can switch to landscape mode for more comfortable surfing. 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity are conspicuous by their absence, so it’s left to EDGE technology to download the web pages and access email at brisk speeds. It seems a strange move from T-Mobile to omit 3G and especially Wi-Fi. HTC and O2 have similar models with the P3300 and Xda Orbit that both pack built-in Wi-Fi (it’s worth noting that HTC manufactures both the MDA Compact III and Xda Orbit). Wi-Fi connectivity plays an increasingly bigger role in mobile communications with the advent of VoIP, so it’s criminal that T-Mobile has dropped it, let alone excluded 3G as well.

As you would expect from a Windows-run smartphone, the MDA Compact III offers the full PIM functionality suite and synchronisation of your calendar, contacts and task with Outlook on your PC. The Windows 5.0 OS also integrates push-email capabilities and a new backup facility that, unlike past Windows smartphones, doesn’t lose data when the battery runs dry. Setting up your push-email still relies on you knowing your server settings and manually inputting them. This procedure isn’t really that intuitive, especially for the first timer.

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For the serious business ally, a full complement of Microsoft Windows Office applications, including Word Mobile, PowerPoint Mobile and Excel Mobile, is on hand. You can create and edit Word and Excel but this doesn’t stretch to PowerPoint where you can only read documents. For writing long emails, Word or Excel documents, a virtual keyboard appears on screen and it’s pretty straightforward, if a little slow, to operate via a stylus.

It may not concern the strict business type, but a two-megapixel camera is available for photos and recording video footage. The shutter button sits on the side, so you hold the phone in landscape form to take pictures. The large display moonlights as a great viewfinder and the shutterbug shoots in a standard 1600x1200-pixel resolution. There’s no flash, but you can alter the brightness and lighting conditions on screen using the stylus, which proves an exasperating experience especially if you want to take a quick snap. The picture quality is in line with most other two-megapixel camera, so you might get the odd photo worth printing, but otherwise it’s pretty standard.

Leaving out Wi-Fi may prove to be an oversight, especially when you can get the same device (only cosmetically different) with Wi-Fi and CoPilot sat nav software on O2’s Xda Orbit. Still, if Wi-Fi and 3G aren’t a consideration and you’re in the market for a sat nav smartphone, then T-Mobile’s sleek MDA Compact III can’t be faulted.

Drive time