Product Reviews

T-Mobile's original MDA Vario won a Best Buy award in our smartphone Labs test in Shopper September 2006. The Vario II is an updated version that supports 3G data.

The MDA Vario II is slightly heavier than the Vario, but feels much tougher. Its rounded edges and textured back make it comfortable to hold. Like the Vario, the Vario II has a full QWERTY keypad. When you want to type a message, you just slide the display sideways to reveal the keypad and the display switches into landscape mode.

The keypad is a definite improvement over the original Vario's. The keys are large and rounded and it's easy to type with your thumbs. Unfortunately, you have to hold down a function key at the bottom left of the keypad to access several punctuation marks, which can be awkward. The onscreen keyboard also has a habit of popping up even when the slide-out keypad is open.

When the keypad is shut, you operate the phone with the stylus

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and enter text using the onscreen virtual keyboard or the handwriting-recognition software. If you don't want to use the stylus, you can navigate the operating system with the directional keypad. However, it is far easier to use the BlackBerry-style thumbwheel to scroll.

The Vario II runs Windows Mobile 5, so it has native support for reading and editing Word and Excel documents, as well as built-in PowerPoint and PDF-viewing software. Pocket Internet Explorer is a reasonable web browser. Even though the screen's 320x240 resolution isn't that high, you can set Explorer to format webpages into a single column. It is easy to connect to the net, as it has integrated 802.11b/g wireless networking and 3G data. T-Mobile's Web 'n' Walk gives you unlimited 3G data for £7.50 per month, but you can't connect the Vario II to your notebook and surf the web on this tariff.

Setting up the Vario II with your email account is simple. The EmailWiz program has profiles for email addresses from companies such as AOL, BT and Pipex, as well as Google Mail. The wizard enters the correct mail server settings automatically, but if you don't have a supported account you can set up your details manually. The Vario II supports Push email only if you have a Microsoft Exchange server, so this is not much good for home users.

T-Mobile's MDA Vario II is a big improvement over the original. It's a shame there's no Push email, which Palm's Treo 750v has. But provided that isn't a massive issue for you, this is an excellent phone.