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My pursuit of the ideal all-in-one device has been a dismal wild-goose chase so far. With the flood of smartphones and new personal digital assistants in the market, you would think that one of them might be the answer.

Let's do a quick rundown of what's available: there's the Blackberry from Research in Motion, the two Treos from Handspring, the Nokia 9210i, the xDA from European wireless company O2 and a couple of older ones from Mitsubishi like the Trium and Sagem running Microsoft Windows CE.

If there are any device manufacturers out there reading this, take heed. Here's a list of features I've compiled talking to people who have been waiting for years for the perfect all-in-one device:

1. Size - should be no bigger or heavier than the Palm V.

2. Screen - colour is preferred, VGA resolution and good backlighting is essential.

3. Palm operating system preferred - it's still the simplest, least battery-draining OS.

4. Expansion slots - at least one, preferably two.

5. Integrated Bluetooth.

6. GPRS.

7. Input method - give us a choice: thumbpad or text input.

8. Long battery life on par with the average mobile phone.

What do we want to do with a device like that? Browse the Web, read the news or e-books, send e-mail, communicate via short messaging sservice, voice or instant messaging, tell the time, store images, enjoy digital audio and video playback, look up phone numbers, use simple word-processing and spreadsheet applications and other basic PIM functions like calendar, calculator, scheduler and so on.

Goodies like integrated digital camera and speech recognition software are nice but not essential. Accessories like a fold-out keyboard, external charger and extra battery pack are necessities.

The Blackberry is just an e-mail station, it's too wide and the monochrome screen is not ideal. Handspring Treo 270 has the size right though looks-wise it's not in the same class as Sony products. A couple of minuses: it doesn't have an expansion slot (16 megabytes of RAM isn't enough for memory hogs) and input is by Qwerty keypad only and a jog button on the side to navigate the Web. Handspring has apparently found that many customers prefer the keypad over Graffiti. Again, that boils down to personal preferences and it's difficult to please everyone. That's why crowd-pleaser Sony decided to go with both keypad and touch screen with the Clie NR70V.

I'll never buy Nokia's communicator again. After paying more than HK$6,000 last August for the 9210 - the little brick which has a great screen but a great many bugs - I returned it to the shop in October and it's been there ever since. I got a call last month from the shop saying that the repairs needed are not covered by warranty and I have to fork out another HK$1,600. Two weeks ago, they said the unit was ready. I went to the shop and checked out the device - the phone unit was working but the computer was still dead. I probably won't see it for another six months.

There aren't many takers of the all-in-one device but vendors are optimistic that the pool is growing. Research firms like International Data Corp and Gartner Group have wildly differing numbers on that market segment. Analysts from both firms acknowledge it's still too early to get an accurate idea as to how big the market is though most agree that it will not become the volume market.

Even Handspring, which has recently become a maker of all-in-ones and not just the plain, old organisers, said the market for combination devices like the Treo wasn't big. Their estimate was about 1 per cent of the mobile phone market.

Over the next three years, that market is expected to expand by 3 to 5 per cent of the overall mobile phone market with new services such as multimedia messaging services and 3G driving the growth. Whether the corporate market is going to jump into the all-in-one devices market, nobody knows. It doesn't make sense for companies to spend HK$5,000 to HK$6,000 per unit for their employees just to send e-mail, especially during an economic downturn. You can get a full-featured laptop for just a couple of thousand dollars more.

Ken Dulaney, Gartner Group analyst believes most people will continue to carry two to three devices with a wireless personal networking technology like Bluetooth making them work together. I concur. Most people prefer to carry a small phone with more memory or an expansion slot so they can have a bigger phonebook. Not many feel the need to check their e-mail frequently, browse the Web or have audio and video playback on their phone.

So my hunt continues. I'll be reviewing the Treo 270 and the Microsoft Pocket PC-powered xDA smart phone next week so let's see if Microsoft's phone edition lives up to the hype.



Holy grail of all-in-one PDAs proves elusive