My friend swears by the orange spv. I have a feeling it may require an orange contract if you buy legit, though there's one here on ebay for £140...

The Reister's verdict on the Nokia 7710:
The 7710 is a positive early step by Nokia into a touch-screen interface smart phone and should appeal to anybody wanting a PDA with added phone features. Advanced users might be frustrated at its lack of speed, and a version with a faster processor and 3G would be a product to be reckoned with. Gamers will love it regardless.

More here. I'm currently salivating...

Welcome to the club, dodgy! I don't have one, but because he doesn't work in an office/fixed spot, mr. taz got one back when they were about double the size of home cordless phones today. For us (but most particularly him, of course) it has been a godsend - though I can completely understand anyone holding out if they don't really need it. I'm not even very comfortable with regular phones, so I'm quite sure that I wouldn't want to be that available for blah-blah-on-demand either.

However, on those days when I'm out a lot (not that often), and he's god-knows-where, and I know he can't reach me if he needs to, I do think that maybe I should go ahead and get one, too.

Personally, dodgygeezer, I would avoid that crap curry spot at 18 Charlotte Street in London.

But that's just me.

Treo 600. You can buy them (new) on ebay for £150. Palm OS. Good sized screen. Email, web browsing, syncronisation with Outlook or any other PIM. MP3 player with SD card. The best thing is the full QWERTY keyboard - after using one, you won't want to go back to tapping emails/texts out on a numberpad ever again. Or you can get a Treo 650 for about £350 new. It has a couple of nice extras like Bluetooth.

The Orange SPV is nice - it's quite a bit smaller than the Treo - but it doesn't have a full keyboard or touchscreen and it's a bit of a pig to use. But a good choice if you want a phone that use can use for email occasionally.

Thanks for that everyone, that was really helpful. Looking at those I have to say that the Orange SVP is the most appealing to me - it seems to do everything I'd want it to at least adequately well without being too big and/or too expensive.

Even more interesting is that a sim free version is available as the i-mate SP3i and the price is right too.

The reason I dislike mobile phones is because my first introduction to them was when I was on call 24/7 for my job. The phone could ring any time of day or night and then I might have to drop everything and go into the office - it could be a quick, easy to answer query or it could mean I'd be spending the next 24 hours sitting in the office rebuilding a server. So while everyone else seems to see mobile phones as a communication nirvana I see them as a ball and chain. Having said all that my memory is attrocious so I could really do with my e-mail and a calendar easily available in a small convenient phone.

For £250 you can have my Nokia 6600. For an extra £10, I'll get it unlocked for you, so you can fit your own SIM.

Of course, the 6600 is a complete pile of kak, but don't let that put you off. A bargain's a bargain, right? Right?