first take Dopod's 595 lacks some of the features of its larger smartphone cousins, but should hold its own against competing mini PDA phones.

Upside
Measuring 112.4 by 49 by 14.8 mm and weighing in at just 115g, the Dopod 595 is easily one of the smallest Windows Mobile 5.0 smartphones we've come across. It's similar in size to the O2 Xda Stealth, but the 595 gets a slight leg-up on the Stealth because in addition to tri-band GSM, it also supports 3G.

Complementing the tri-band GSM and 3G connectivity options, the 595 also offers Bluetooth 2.0 (with A2DP support for stereo headsets), Infrared and USB 1.1 for charging and data transfer. Conspicuously absent is 802.11b/g Wi-Fi support.

The increased transfer rates offered by 3G are of little benefit if they're not coupled with bandwidth-hungry applications. One way you're able to chew up said bandwidth on the 595 is through video calling -- a 0.1-megapixel camera sits on the front to enable this. For taking regular video and still photos, there's also a 1.3-megapixel offering on the back.

Data input is handled by a 3-way jog wheel on the side (allowing users to painlessly cycle through messages and documents), a 5-way navigation pad, two soft keys and a regular phone keypad. A touchscreen and full QWERTY keyboard are nowhere to be found, however.

Rounding out the feature-set is a hot-swappable microSD slot and support for polyphonic, MP3, WMA, WAV, AAC and AMR ringtones.

Downside
As with O2's Stealth, while it's great to see such a compact device sporting the office productivity features of Windows Mobile 5.0 (e.g. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, etc), some users may become frustrated with the 2.2-inch screen, which is smaller than that offered by more data-centric smartphones.

Similarly, the lack of a full QWERTY keyboard means typing out messages and documents is a relatively drawn-out process.

While we're reluctant to make performance predictions until we're able to test the device first-hand, the 300MHz Samsung processor in the 595 won't be as quick as the 400MHz+ Intel chips found in other smartphone models, which is likely to affect application load times and performance.

As mentioned above, the lack of 802.11b/g Wi-Fi will be troubling for some.

Outlook
Dopod's 595 lacks some of the features of its larger smartphone cousins, but should hold its own against competing mini PDA phones.

Dopod 595
Company: Dopod
RRP: TBA