Just below the jog wheel there's another OK button and below that a dedicated button for launching the voice dialing application. (It requires you to record voice tags for each contact you want to be able to voice dial—unlike the last BlackBerry I tried, which only needed a voice tag recorded if it had repeated problems understanding the spoken name.) Near the bottom of the left edge, you'll find a slider switch for turning the Wi-Fi radio on or off.

On the right-hand edge, the power button is near the top. Just below it is a dedicated button for launching the HTC Comm Manager applet with onscreen toggle buttons for turning radios and communications applications on and off—phone, Bluetooth, messaging, Wi-Fi, auto synching and ringing. (There's also a Flight Mode button: clicking it once automatically turns all the radios off.) Near the bottom of the right edge: a dedicated button for launching the camera application.

On the back, you'll find the camera lens, a tiny camera light and a port for connecting the P4000 to a car antenna.

Keyboard
The pièce de résistance is the 41-key QWERTY keyboard, which slides out to the right. When it slides out, the P4000's screen orientation automatically switches from portrait to landscape.

The keys are bigger and more clearly marked than on most PDA keyboards, including BlackBerrys, but are not as nicely shaped or raised from the surface as they could be. While the BlackBerry layout is the model for such keyboards, this one, which is much more horizontal and less cramped, works at least as well in my opinion, mainly because the keys are bigger and better spaced.

All but three of the keys have an Alt value. The Y, U, I, H, J, K, B, N, M and period keys double as the telephone number pad. You have Alt-plus access to more useful special characters than most PDA keyboard provide - including @, ", ' &, *, =, ( and ). Overall, I'd say the P4000 keyboard compares very well with BlackBerrys, and may be preferable if you have fat finger tips.

While the device feels solidly constructed for the most part, the cover over the battery compartment on the back is made of very thin plastic and could easily break. It was also a little tricky to get it back on.

E-Mail/Phone
For an e-mail device, I still prefer the BlackBerry. It's just slicker - easier to set up, easier to use. But the P4000, coupled with Telus's Visto push mail service, comes close. As a Web browser, it suffers the same limitations as any mobile device, although the screen is bigger and higher resolution than many and the jog wheel makes scrolling through pages relatively easy.

As a phone, it suffers the limitations of any device with a QWERTY keyboard rather than a conventional telephone number pad—calling a party whose number is not in your contacts list requires means launching an application and clicking keys on an onscreen keypad or laboriously punch the tiny keys on the keyboard while holding down the Alt key. My test calls on the Telus network had good volume and clarity, even indoors and with a relatively weak connection.

Multimedia
The multimedia functions are a mixed bag. The P4000 impresses most as a music player. It comes with stereo ear buds, unlike some recent multimedia BlackBerrys we've tested, and it sounds pretty good. The earbuds, however, plug into the same USB port as the power and synch cables—meaning you can't use standard head phones. This made it impossible to do side-by-side comparison tests with other mobile devices.

As noted, the P4000 didn't always perform superbly in playing back movies, but it's still amazing that devices this small and versatile can play video as well as they can.

The camera, like most phone cameras, is not very good—mediocre fixed-focus lens, low resolution sensor and inferior auto-exposure system combine to produce not very sharp, not very well exposed pictures that you can print at sizes no larger than 4 x 3 inches. There is also a very long delay between pressing the shutter button - the center of the four-way navigator - and the exposure actually being made.

Still, as a tool for recording visual notes or recording shenanigans at a club, it's probably good enough. It does include a small flash unit. And the camera software offers more flexibility than most, including exposure compensation, manual white balance control and a self-timer.

Bottom line: The P4000 is a very small, very full-featured Windows Mobile device that can convert from stylus-based handwriting-recognition text entry to keyboard text entry and offers all the multimedia conveniences. If you're not a BlackBerry bigot, it's definitely worth a look-see.