The iPAQ 614 Business Navigator is a Windows Mobile 6 Professional device in a candybar-style format. It has a large touch screen and number pad. It comes in two versions; one with a back-facing, 3-megapixel camera, one without. The one with is called the 614c, the one without is called the 614. Apart from this the two versions of the device are the same.

This is a pretty large and chunky handset weighing in at 145g and measuring 117mm tall, 60mm wide and 17mm thick. There are other Windows Mobile smartphones available that are smaller and lighter.

In order to maximise the space available for both screen and number pad, HP has done away with a navigation pad. Instead it has embedded what it calls a Smart Touch Wheel into the number pad. Effectively this is a circle which crosses every number key except the 5 and 8. You use it by running a finger tip around it and, as you do so, you can scroll up and down the screen.

It's a clever idea, but it doesn't work as well as a more conventional navigation pad. It is difficult to be precise with scrolling, and there is no 'select' key. The options here are to tap the screen, use the Enter key that sits on the front fascia or use a wheel that is located on the left side of the casing. None of these is as efficient or speedy as simply tapping the centre of a navigation button.

This is a quad-band GSM smartphone with HSDPA at speeds up to 7.2Mbps. You will be hard pressed to find that speed in the UK currently, but it will scale down to 3.6Mbps, which is more widespread. There is no front-facing camera for two-way video calling, but Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are both built in.

GPS is built in too, and Hewlett Packard has put Google Maps onto the device so you can get some use out of it as a navigation tool. There are several software add-ons that can give you true real-time point-to-point navigation if you want to opt for one of those instead.

One of the other software highlights is HP Voice Reply. You can record yourself talking and attach the resulting file to an e-mail message. This is great if you are keen on mobile e-mail but find the numeric key pad just too fiddly for composing replies. File sizes are relatively small, and during testing the system was easy and fast to use.

The iPAQ 614/614c is a chunky candybar-style smartphone, but the trade-off is a large screen and big number pad. The Smart Touch Wheel is not the greatest idea in the world, but there are good points, most notably HP's Voice Reply e-mail system.