It's that time again. Scotland play Italy on Saturday in the Six Nations Rugy Union Championship.

All you have to do is use the comments link below to guess the total number of points that will be scored in the match. The person nearest the total will take home $25 of free software from our Palm or Windows Mobile software stores. If Scotland win, the prize will go up to $40!

Links: Palm Store / Windows Mobile Store

The HP iPAQ 614c is the latest smartphone release from HP, and it is one that takes the Windows Mobile market in a few new directions without really aiming for one in particular. The specifications are impressive-

Windows Mobile 6 Professional
Marvell PXA270 Processor 520 MHz
UMTS (3G)/HSDPA connection
Single-handed use with smart touch wheel
MicroSD Slot
3 Megapixel, autofocus, 4X digital zoom
Image file formats: GIF, JPEG, BMP, PNG
128 MB SDRAM
256 MB flash ROM
Integrated Quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, Tri Band HSPDA
Integrated WiFi – 802.11 b/g with WPA2 security
Integrated Bluetooth v2.0 with EDR
Integrated GPS navigation ( Assisted GPS)
HP Exclusive Applications –
HP iPAQ Data Connect; HP VoiceReply; HP Voice Commander7; HP iPAQ Device Connect; MMS Composer, Bluetooth
Manager, Certificate Enroller, HP Photosmart Mobile, iPAQ Wireless Manager, Pocket Panel Lite, HP Help and Support, HPQuickStart Tour, HP Enterprise Mobility Agent.
Weight (with battery)–  145g (5.1 oz)
Dimensions– 117 x 60.3 x 17.5mm (4.6 x 2.37 x 0.69 in)
Price- £364.25 (minus £50 cashback if purchased during March 2008)

There is little more you can add to a smartphone, and the specs easily rival the likes of the TyTN II and all of the other top end smartphones available today. On top of the above, there is a 1590mAh battery and a decent range of bundled software not seen on many other Windows Mobile devices. Let’s start off by looking at the hardware and design-

Design & Practicality

In the marketing images the 614c looks quite small, but the footprint is actually larger than the TyTN II. It is, however, thinner and much lighter so it is a difficult choice deciding which one wins in the design stakes. The 614c looks and feels more like a phone, which is a bonus, and the screen is identical to the TyTN’s at 2.8 inches and QVGA. The TyTN II is a good smartphone to compare the 614c to because their specifications are very similar, yet there is close to £100 difference in price.

First impressions are of a corporate looking phone that makes no attempt to stand out in any given situation. The outer covering is dark grey and slightly soft to the touch and around the edges is a ring of matt silver, which adds to a slightly plastic feel in the construction. It does feel well built, but the materials used almost seem to want to tell a different story.

The keyboard is a standard 1-0 affair, but with an impressive variety of shortcut keys which make this one of the most one-handed Windows Mobile smartphones I have seen. You get call start/end buttons, power on/off, return, c, OK, Windows and a screen switch (portrait / landscape key) which works extremely well. The navigational touches do not end there though because there is a JOG dial on the left hand side and the unique smart touch wheel. The smart touch wheel is indeed a strange little addition which initially seems to just move the screen selection up and down, but you can zoom in and out of maps as well. It is an unusual addition, but not one that I personally can see much benefit with- give me more time to play with it though.

The screen is of course also navigated with the included stylus, and it is one of the better made telescopic models I have seen to date. However, it is housed in the bottom left hand corner of the 614c, which is the worst possible place for a right handed person to remove it from. It’s not a deal breaker, but a strange design decision to say the least.

HP has also taken one of the iconic features of the Palm Treo, and now includes a mute button on the top edge. This may seem like a small addition, but is actually one that will save you lots of time when you need to mute your phone quickly. Hopefully this feature will start to arrive in many other smartphone in the near future.

Rounding off the exterior buttons are a camera key on the right side, voice record and OK keys flanking the left sided JOG dial and a soft reset button at the bottom. The 614c is synchronised and powered via miniUSB, which is fast becoming standard in most smartphones, and there is also a lanyard slot for those strange people that attach a lanyard to a smartphone...

The SIM and microSD slots are under the battery (grrrrrrr!) which is slightly painful for people who swap SD cards frequently, so best to invest in a big one which the 614c will be compatible with.

In the next instalment I will look at the general performance of the 614c, but first impressions are of a phone that speeds along very nicely and the battery life is extremely impressive straight from the first charge. So, it’s not small but it’s got a big heart and this does lead me to wonder why HP did not choose to include a QWERTY keyboard. There is easily enough space for a half decent full keyboard below the screen, but I suspect that honour has been reserved for the upcoming 914c.

Available from Clove for £364.25 (minus £50 rebate)

The PDA247 Monthly newsletter will return from next week. It will include news, reviews (not seen on 247 yet), special offers, competitions and all sorts of other goodies.

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Gavin has sent in details of the LionKing800 smartphone, which seems to have impossible battery specifications. Not sure how they can get so much power in small battery like that...

Network  GSM900 / DCS1800
SIZE ( L × W × H )  120*65*20 mm
BATTERY  Lithium Batteries 16800mA 
color silver
STANDBY TIME  About 365 days
TALKING TIME  About 3-5 days

LSL Cubilete v1.0 has been released and will be great news for anyone who has heard of Cubilete...

The LSL Cubilete will allow you play the Standard Cubilete game against 3 other players on the table following the classic rules. Each player takes its turn to roll (configurable up to 3 rolls), setting aside any dice they want for their final hand. The player with the highest 5 of a kind hand wins (Aces are wild cards). A number of rounds are played and the winner of a game is the first to score the define total points (or patas).

Also you can play Poker Dice using Cubilete. Similar to the standard Cubilete game, each player will takes its turn to roll setting aside any dice they want for their final hand. At the end of the round, the player with the best hand wins.

You can configure the game by selecting the number of throws per round, the total points or patas to win, the players at the table, player comments (on/off), style of dices to use, and the colors of the display options. The Game contains Help features instructing the novice player on the Basic Rules of the Game, how to select the players, and how to configure the game.

Michael has done some maths in Maybe it's possible to have too many developers- "I never thought I'd say that, but Apple's making me wonder. Apple says 100,000 developers have already downloaded the iPhone SDK (link). For comparison, it took Palm a couple of years of heavy evangelism to hit the same milestone. That's a deceptive comparison, though -- Palm was a small and relatively unknown company at the time, whereas Apple is a huge brand, with a large base of current Mac developers that it can bring over to the iPhone.

So the process was quite a bit easier for Apple. But still, criminey, 100k is a lot of SDK downloads in just four days. Apple has clearly struck a nerve.

In addition to the 100k statistic, the Apple press release included new endorsements from companies like Intuit, Namco, PopCap (Bejeweled, baby), and SixApart. It's a very interesting variety of companies."

Today's free eBook is The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate by Ted Chiang- "O MIGHTY CALIPH AND Commander of the Faithful, I am humbled to be in the splendor of your presence; a man can hope for no greater blessing as long as he lives. The story I have to tell is truly a strange one, and were the entirety to be tattooed at the corner of one's eye, the marvel of its presentation would not exceed that of the events recounted, for it is a warning to those who would be warned and a lesson to those who would learn.
   
My name is Fuwaad ibn Abbas, and I was born here in Baghdad, City of Peace. My father was a grain merchant, but for much of my life I have worked as a purveyor of fine fabrics, trading in silk from Damascus and linen from Egypt and scarves from Morocco that are embroidered with gold. I was prosperous, but my heart was troubled, and neither the purchase of luxuries nor the giving of alms was able to soothe it. Now I stand before you without a single dirham in my purse, but I am at peace.
   
Allah is the beginning of all things, but with Your Majesty's permission, I begin my story with the day I took a walk through the district of metalsmiths. I needed to purchase a gift for a man I had to do business with, and had been told he might appreciate a tray made of silver. After browsing for half an hour, I noticed that one of the largest shops in the market had been taken over by a new merchant. It was a prized location that must have been expensive to acquire, so I entered to peruse its wares."