PDA Cell Phones – Now two things wrapped in one.

Essentially, small, handheld computers, Personal Digital Assistants or PDA’s, were initially supposed to be just organizers, but this has changed leaps and bounds over time. Today, technology is moving at a very fast pace. The PDA’s today have the most awesome features with the convenience of mobility packed into a powerful package.

Today, PDAs come with standard features like games, calendar, schedule, document writer, digital address book, spreadsheet maker, and not to mention multimedia features like music players, video players, video, and touch screens. However, almost all the PDA’s available today also double up as cell phones. Primarily there are two types of technologies here that PDA phones use. These are either CDMA or GSM. So, choice of technology regarding networks is very important. This is because PDAs bought for one technology of mobile networks, cannot be inter-used with the other technology in any way. So, it matters immensely what technology you want to use. Once you have decided on that, you know which ranges to look at. At present, globally, GSM technology has an edge over CDMA. However, CDMA is catching on fast in newer, emerging markets.

PDA cell phones today are used because they serve many different purposes at the same time. In higher end models, more add-ons are available such as barcode scanners, business card scanners, GPS receivers and wireless LAN among others. It is important to note that the most important of a PDA is its processor. With speeds ranging from 200 MHz to 650 MHz and above, it is important to decide what speed you need. The faster it is the more power hungry it will be, and as a result the battery life will suffer. Once this is settled, and then comes the memory.

The newer PDAs have memory starting from 32 MB, 64 MB, and higher. This is the memory where temporary data is stored and needs to use power to work. The other kind of memory is the permanent kind where all your data is stored. Today, phones are even coming with hard disk drives with memory in excess of 4 GB also being available. Otherwise, there is always the option of the memory card, which allows you to expand your memory quite easily.

Importance should be given to connectivity, as this is an important feature of PDA cell phones. Bluetooth, infrared, wireless LAN, GPS locators, GPRS and WAP are some such options. Take only what you need, as prices go up with added network options. The most used of these are Bluetooth and wireless LAN in today’s phones. Look to buy for the future and you will be a satisfied customer.