The Glofiish X800 is a very well specified Windows Mobile Pocket PC. It doesn't come cheap, and that is in part explained by its high end specifications, in part by the fact that it is only available SIM-free.

If you are prepared to part with the money you do get one massively functional handheld device. Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional is bulked out with a veritable army of added software. There is an FM radio - unusual for a Pocket PC, that - and a GPS antenna, which is also unusual.

Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are built in, and the 3G support runs to HSDPA. There is a front-facing camera for video calling, and you can't fail to miss it as it has a bright red frame which makes a stark contrast to the otherwise black and silver casing. Another red frame surrounds the main camera, a 2-megapixel effort, whose lens is on the back of the casing.

The 2.8-inch screen is, as is usual for Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional, touch-sensitive. Less usual is its high resolution. At 640 x 480 pixels it is sharp and easy to read.

With all that hardware packed inside, the X800 is not small. It measures 113.5mm tall, 60.5mm wide and 15.8mm thick, and it weighs 147g.

Much of the software E-TEN adds to Windows Mobile has the potential to be very useful. One of the buttons beneath the screen calls up a quick application and service picker, for example, so you can switch into often-used tools easily. It takes a key press and a tap to send the screen into wide format, or to use the camera's LED flash as a torch, or get to the Windows Mobile calculator.

Meanwhile, there is a business card recogniser that uses the main camera to scan cards and then converts their contents into an entry in the Contacts database. It worked surprisingly well. An overlay onto the main screen offers access to weather forecasting, there is a block-and-allow list manager, and a utility that can send your current location, as identified by the GPS antenna, as latitude and longitude to an SMS recipient.

There is plenty more pre-installed software that we don't have the space to mention here. But with more than 140MB of free storage memory and support for microSD cards, there is nothing to stop you adding yet more software of your own.

The Glofiish X800 is a ‘bells and whistles' Windows Mobile device. While expensive, it sits at the leading edge of what can be achieved today.