Once in a while a gadget comes along that makes your inner geek come alive. A gadget that is so feature packed, so crammed with technology and just sooo cool; you’ll spend hours exploring it. One such gadget is the HTC TyTn II.

The TyTn II is a mobile phone/PDA/GPS navigator that is crammed with more features than you can shake a stick at. Chunky at 59 x 112 x 19 mm and weighing 190 grams, the TyTn II’s appearance, for the lack of a better term, can be described somewhat akin to a brick. A highly expensive, GPS-enabled mobile brick, but a brick nonetheless. But don’t be fooled by its humble appearance. The TyTn II sports a touch screen, 2.8-inch 240 x 320 QVGA TFT-LCD display. The front of the TyTn II has a bunch of soft keys, navigation pad and shortcut buttons as well as a VGA camera to facilitate video calls. One nice feature of the TyTn II is the three-way scroll wheel on the top left of the handset that lets you scroll through emails, messages and menu items quickly and easily. Sliding the front of the TyTn II to the left reveals the well-laid out QWERTY keyboard and re-orients the display automatically. You can also tilt the display up and place the TyTn II on the table like a mini-laptop. The QWERTY pad, although cramped and a bit small, is easy to press– perfect for answering email or browsing the web. The keypad is easy enough to use with enough travel and tactile feedback, and is big enough even for someone with bigger than average digits (i.e., me). Speaking of the web, the phone can connect to the web in a variety of ways: by Wi-fi (802.11 b/g), 3.5G (HSDPA and UMTS) and by GPRS and EDGE. The Qualcomm MSM7200 processor performed well during the test and I’ve never had the unit hang on me.

One of the nice things about the TyTn II is that it uses the new Windows Mobile 6 platform. The phone comes pre-installed mobile versions of Word, Excel and Powerpoint, along with a few extras like Adobe Reader LE, Windows Live and Windows Media player. The TyTn II is HSDPA-and quadband-enabled, so globetrotting users won’t have a problem using their phones in other countries. An internal GPS antenna allows you to find out where you are exactly, but unfortunately doesn’t come with pre-installed satellite navigation software, although after downloading Google maps the GPS receiver worked relatively well.

The TyTn II also has a built in 3-megapixel camera on the back, but alas, it doesn’t have a flash, not even a LED one. As a consequence picture quality suffers immensely in low light conditions, although daylight pictures are a bit better.

Calls made to and from the TyTn II were crisp and clear, with no dropped calls. Signal strength wasn’t as good as other phones – on locations were other phones registered signal strengths of 1 or 2, the TyTn II didn’t register a signal at all. Sound quality of the TyTn II is good, but the unit’s volume needs work – even set on high, I could barely hear sound clips and Massive Attack’s Teardrop playing over its speakers.