Handheld Software

Personal digital assistants (PDAs) are handheld devices that were originally designed as personal organizers, but became much more versatile over the years. more...

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PDAs have many uses: calculating, use as a clock and calendar, playing computer games, accessing the Internet, sending and receiving e-mail, use as a radio or stereo, video recording, recording notes, use as an address book, GPS and use as a spreadsheet. Newer PDAs also have both color screens and audio capabilities, enabling them to be used as mobile phones (smartphone), web browsers or portable media players. Many PDAs can access the Internet, intranets or extranets via Wi-Fi, or Wireless Wide-Area Networks (WWANs). One of the most significant PDA characteristic is the presence of a touch screen.

Typical Features

A typical PDA has a touch screen for data entry, a memory card slot for data storage and IrDA port for connectivity. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are often integrated in newer PDAs.

Touch screen

Many original PDAs, such as the Palm Pilot, featured touch screens for user interaction, having only a few buttons usually reserved for shortcuts to often used programs. Touch screen PDAs, including Windows Pocket PC devices, usually have a detachable stylus that can be used on the touch screen. Interaction is then done by tapping the screen to activate buttons or menu choices, and dragging the stylus to, for example, highlight text.

Text input is usually done in one of two ways:

Using a virtual keyboard, where a keyboard is shown on the touch screen. Input is done by tapping the letters.; Using letter or word recognition, where letters or words are written on the touch screen, and then "translated" to letters in the currently activated text field. Despite rigorous research and development projects, this data input method still requires much patience from the user since it tends to be rather inaccurate.;

PDAs for business use, including the BlackBerry and Treo, have full keyboards and scroll wheels or thumb wheels to facilitate data entry and navigation, in addition to supporting touch-screen input. There are also full-size foldable keyboards available that plug directly, or use wireless technology to interface with the PDA and allow for normal typing. BlackBerry also has additional functionality as push based email and applications.

Memory Cards

Almost all PDAs have some form of memory card slot. A standard on modern PDAs is the SD (Secure Digital) slot. Although originally designed for memory, in recent years the invention of the SDIO standard has allowed such things as Wi-Fi cards and Webcams to be used in the same slot. Compact Flash slots are used in many PDAs to provide extra expandability. For example, one slot is used for memory and the other for Wi-Fi. Some PDAs also have a USB port, mainly for USB flash drives.

Read more at Wikipedia.org