HP is giving away a free app to users of iPAQ PDAs and smartphones every Monday from its iPAQ Choice store.

The move follows the company’s announcement that there are now 1000 titles available from the software store. The landmark app was none other than Spb’s peerless Mobile Shell 3.0, the replacement UI for Windows Mobile and one of the must-have programs for the platform.

Registered iPAQ users should check the website www.ipaqchoice.com every Monday to see which free app is up for grabs.

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HP usually gives its PDAs numbers, but in this case we just have a name, the iPAQ Data Messenger. The name gives you a big clue that this is a device for the serious communicator. The iPAQ Data Messenger is intended for those people who need to create a lot of data while on the move. To that end there is a keyboard which slides out of the right long edge of the device.

Now this keyboard is nice enough, but it is not quite as well designed as the very best of them. Its keys are slightly concave which HP must think is a clever wheeze to make them easier to hit. Overall, though, it makes the keyboard look slightly odd in design and we didn’t feel that it added a lot to usability.

With no separate number row you are left with embedded number keys which you get to via a separate ‘shift’ type key. This has to be pressed every time you want a number, so if you need to type an email with a phone number in it you have to keep pressing the ‘shift’ key for every digit in the number, which is tedious.

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The long-running iPAQ range has seen a lot of changes over the years. The latest, in the form of the Voice Messenger, see it adopt the traditional form factor of the moile phone, and with some success. Running the non touch screen Windows …

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