2. Email

Every smartphone does mobile email; it's the first thing you think of with a BlackBerry. The capabilities of the mail software vary though, depending on the device you have and how you're getting email onto it. You can sync contacts and events as well as email and file messages in folders as you read them with a BlackBerry that syncs with your company's BlackBerry Enterprise Server, or a Windows Mobile smartphone that sync with Exchange Server. You won't get the same flexibility, however, if you sync your BlackBerry via a Web site. You can read any email account with POP3 access on a BlackBerry; some of the free webmail services charge for POP3 access, and you have to turn it on for Gmail manually. Windows Mobile supports IMAPaccounts - including AOL mail - as well as POP3.

Windows Mobile works with AOL and Gmail as well as Hotmail and standard ISPs.

The built-in Symbian mail client handles POP3 and IMAP connections, but if you want extra features or push email, you can add more powerful mail software. There are several end user mail clients for Symbian devices like ProfiMail, which adds email preview; OneMail.ToGo collects mail from Exchange, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, Gmail and webmail systems.

If you don't use Exchange or BES, there are push mail applications like Visto and Good Mobile Messaging (now owned by Motorola) for all three smartphone operating systems, but they have to be supplied through your company or cellular operator. The BlackBerry Connect client is available for a number of phones; again it depends on the operator, but you can download it for several Nokia phones, like the E61, from the Nokia Business site.

The BlackBerry Connect client gives you push email on a range of Symbian and Windows Mobile devices.

Whatever mail client you use, spend a little time learning your way around the input options. On a BlackBerry, you just press and hold a key down to get a capital, while typing two spaces gives you a full stop and an initial capital on the new sentence; you can create AutoText corrections for words you mistype or just to make typing faster - the BlackBerry already turns 'wer' into 'we're', for example, and there are several other simple corrections built in.

Windows Mobile has a library of canned phrases you can insert; edit these to be what you actually want to say (choose Menu > Options > Edit My Text in Messaging). Check the Word Completion settings (under Settings > Input): you can choose how many letters to enter before Windows Mobile guesses the word you're trying to type, and if you often use the same phrases you can have it suggest the next two or three words as well. If you're fed up of deleting the space after a suggested word at the end of a sentence, turn the space off. And make sure T9 predictive text is turned on for your Symbian phone by choosing Edit > Dictionary On in the app you're using; get used to using the "*" key to pick alternatives and add punctuation.

BlackBerry has by far the most powerful email search; it is very fast and covers the entire message. In contrast, Windows Mobile search is much slower and more primitive. If you're looking for mail from a particular sender it's faster to find a sender somewhere nearby in the alphabet and switch the sort to From than it is to run a search (this will change with Windows Mobile 6).

Windows Mobile can sync email, contacts and calendar from MSN directly to your phone (including Windows Live mail, contacts and calendar; just fill in your Windows Live address in the Pocket MSN app). Otherwise, if you want to get your calendar and contacts from your desktop PIM into your mobile device, the software supplied will do the job for information that's in Outlook. If you use a different PIM, look for software like iAnywhere's XTND Connect, which syncs contacts, calendars and notes from Lotus Organizer, Notes, GroupWise and ACT to Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and Symbian phones. Mac users need a copy of The Missing Sync for Windows Mobile (which will soon support the BlackBerry too).