The iMate Pocket PC and Phone combination didn't meet with approval when LP first saw it, it does look a little like a cheap O2 XDA copy and to be fair there is reason for that as both the XDA and the iMate are related to the ever popular Ipaq family.

Powered by a 400mhz Intel X scale processor the iMate is about the size of an Ipaq which makes it a little ungainly as an everyday mobile but a feature packed PDA / Phone combo, it comes as standard with 128mb of RAM and has an SD slot for more memory options should you require them. Navigating is a surprising experience with a pocket PC style interface which is actually windows Mobile 2003 and the 320 x 240 pixel colour screen measuring 3.5 inches makes easy reading.

Connectivity is also good which is an essential for any PDA especially one with "all in one" pretences like the iMate, it has good old fashioned IrDA, Bluetooth, GSM tri band and GPRS but what does this mean for the user?

Having borrowed (read stolen) an iMate for a day LP set to work trying to prove that this was a substandard Ipaq by configuring multiple email accounts to download using the GPRS connection and much to his surprise it worked more reliably than his P800, surely some mistake! So onto running programmes, MS mobile 2003 comes with the ability to open and work with both word and excel documents, after loading up and SD card with a few choice spreadsheets and sunning them on the iMate it seemed that it was more than up to the task. Even when the inbuilt windows media 9 player was running a video clip again from the SD card the speed of the application accessing the spreadsheet was acceptable although we did manage to stall the video a few times.

Just when we thought LP was beaten he did manage to prove that battery life was a little short by killing the iMate's in built power in just under 4 hours of continuous use, which while comparable with an Ipaq does indicate that its talk time as a phone may be quite low perhaps about 3 hours.

There is little to choose between and XDA and the iMate, both have the integrated camera and full connectivity options (perhaps wifi would have been nice) and both tip the scales at about 200 grams, but the iMate should be about £50 cheaper sim free and is a lot easier to get without a network connection i.e. unlocked.

This is a genuine contender for a truly mobile office and each variation we see of the windows mobile 2003 operating system convinces us that the days of Symbian dominance in this sector are numbered.

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