After dialing the Iowa number I was then prompted to dial my international number as normal, E.g. 011 44 131 555 5555 – An international call to the UK, City of Edinburgh, number 555-5555. It worked perfectly!

The downside of this service (apart from its undoubtedly short life expectancy) is you need to dial a heck of a lot of numbers, and if you don’t have peoples numbers committed to memory it becomes even more awkward.

Luckily there’s a trick, one I used to use to automatically dial through to regularly called extensions.

Placing ’p’ in the middle of a number causes most cellphones to pause for a few seconds when dialing. This allows you to append the extension to the saved number, but delay the dialing of that part until the automated switchboard has picked up.

However, my T-Mobile MDA wouldn’t let me insert a p while dialing, nor did the Ericsson trick of holding * for a few seconds work. I found the solution was to enter the complete number, including the p’s, as a number for a contact and then dial that contact as normal.

Two p’s seemed to cause the right amount of delay. I also found that inserting brackets in the number after the p would cause Windows Mobile to cease dialing. Spaces however were fine.

Now, lets see how long the service lasts before being swamped or shutdown!

What’s great about it though? It has a standard 3.5mm audio jack.

My last five phones have ranged from ‘ok’ to ‘good’ for playing music, but all have come with non-standard headphone jacks. Instead of being able to use your own headphones, you’re invariably stuck with the cheap effort bundled with your phone, or with having to buy (and not lose) an adaptor.

My T-Mobile MDA certainly has the capacity and software to be a great little music player for short, or even long, trips. But instead, I usually pack my Nano. Not only can I then use noise-canceling headphones if I’m flying, but I only have to pack one set of headphones.

Bravo Apple. Other phone vendors, take note.

Technology has moved on however and there are now Smartphone’s available that are the same size as regular models, and Pocket PC Phones only a little larger. The T-Mobile MDA is from the HTC Wizard family and weighs in at around 160g with dimensions of 108 x 58 x 24mm. This makes it a little larger than my K750, but smaller than most PDA’s on the market and a size that easily slips into a trouser pocket without creating a somewhat embarrassing bulge.

Overall I’m very pleased with the MDA. It’s slightly lower spec than you’d like as a PDA and not quite as usable as a regular phone for calls, but it truly is more than the sum of its parts. I love that courtesy of Outlook and ActiveSync I have my Email, Contacts, Calendar, Notes and Tasks with me at all times – while my K750 could also sync this information it was cumbersome to do anything other than view it. Both WiFi and EDGE/GPRS work well, I have an unlimited data plan on T-Mobile and having both options allows me to connect from virtually anywhere. I recently spent a week in Sedona, AZ where there’s little in the way of hotspots, but by connecting my laptop to the MDA allowed me to use the EDGE network with speeds varying from 15-25kbs. And of course being based on Windows Mobile there are a wealth of applications out there for all your needs; three of my favourites are Opera, Newsgator Mobile and Pocket Sudoku.

If you’re just looking for a fancy phone for messaging and calls this probably won’t be the phone for you, but if you want a phone that combines the functionality of a PDA and calls then the MDA is certainly worth checking out.