PalmOne Tungsten T5

It's no secret that the market for standalone handhelds is shrinking, but with the Tungsten T5, PalmOne is betting that there's still room for a plain old power PDA. The T5 is not a smart phone. Nor does it have Wi-Fi--unlike nearly every other PDA in its tax bracket. And it borrows its straightforward design from the workhorse Tungsten E series (rather than the T3 that it supplants with its fancy slider). What the T5 lacks in flash, it makes up for at least partly in function. It has 256MB of nonvolatile flash memory, a great display, and Bluetooth, and thanks to new software tweaks not found on other Tungstens, it is also a capable MP3 player and thumb drive. The T5 will be available in stores on November 3 for around $400. Meanwhile, PalmOne will drop the price of its other business-friendly handheld, the Tungsten T3, to about $350.

The T5's most notable feature is its gorgeous display. The 3.7-inch-diagonal TFT screen shows 65,536 colors and a sharp 320x480-pixel resolution. Similar to the Tungsten T3, the T5 has virtual Graffiti input area, which increases the overall viewing size of the screen. There's a convenient taskbar at the bottom of the screen that offers quick access to the Home page, the Find function, Bluetooth, and more. You can also switch from Portrait and Landscape mode with a single click. Below the screen, you'll find the standard four shortcut keys, easily identified by their icons as Home, Calendar, Contacts, and Files. The five-way toggle sits in the center, and its roomy layout makes for easy navigation.