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There is also an FM tuner and both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are built in. There is no infra-red, which is a bit of a niggle as I do find this handy from time to time. A bigger niggle though is that the headset connector is a 2.5mm jack. You have to use the provide in-ear buds to take advantage of the FM radio. But for listening to your own music you could swap to your own favourite earphones if, and only if, you have and can be bothered to use a 2.5mm to 3.5mm adaptor. Come on, E-TEN, why not go 3.5mm next time round?

E-TEN’s PDAs tend to be a little on the chunky side, and the screen does seem a bit lost in the height of the X500+. Still, the size is liveable with at 113mm tall, 59.5mm wide and 15.5mm thick.

Technically, the 400MHz Samsung processor seemed to be up to the task required, though I’d have liked to see E-TEN go to town with the built in memory. 128MB of ROM and 64MB of RAM aren’t wildly out of step with what else is around, but after a hard reset I found my review sample offering just 30MB of free storage memory.

Battery life was pretty good. I managed eight and a half hours of continuous music from a fully charged battery with the screen forced to stay on. I reckon you could manage a few hours of GPS navigation without the need for mains power. This is important as E-TEN doesn’t provide a vehicle power charger, though you do get a wallet style carrying case, spare stylus, USB cable and mains power adaptor.

Verdict

I am a fan of E-TEN’s Windows Mobile devices. The company seems to find plenty of ways of augmenting the basic operating system that others don’t, and while not every add-on will be useful some are certainly worth having. Without 3G this is not quite the Pocket PC with everything, but it comes close and that high resolution screen is superb.

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