Why getting bigger is supposed to be better

The schoolgirls on the bus were whispering about it, the man in a mobile-phone shop in Waterford said he'd give anything to see one and all my friends think it looks like a glasses case - or was it a new Nintendo GameBoy?

The piece of technology I had the joy of trying out for a week was in fact a mobile phone. Yes, just when everyone thought the days of the brick-sized mobile phone was gone, Nokia has decided to introduce its new 5510.

To those who haven't seen the ads or are not avid texters, there is no logic to the 5510. Measuring five inches by two inches, it is fairly chunky and defies the normative belief that as technology improves, mobile phones must become smaller and smaller.

The method behind this mobile madness is simple: if people use a phone for texting, make it easier - give them a keyboard. So instead of the 10 keys that most mobile-users fumble over to write a text message, the Nokia 5510 has 45. These include 10 number numerical keys and 26 letter keys spread across the phone like a QWERTY keyboard on any computer. Set in the middle is the screen.

But that's not all - why carry a Walkman in one pocket and a mobile phone in the other, when you can have a mobile phone, FM radio and MP3 player rolled into one?

The great thing about this feature of the 5510 is that it saves the embarrassment of walking along the street, Walkman on full blast and phone ringing shrilly in your back pocket. Instead, you can listen to the radio, send text messages and still know when the phone is ringing.

It also means if you hear something you like on radio, you can record it on to MP3 there and then.

For the mobile phone gamers and those of you who have got your head around WAP (and I'm not one of them) the 5510 has those features too.

But I'm not paid to do free advertising for Nokia. The 5510 has its drawbacks. It is bulky - it does not fit snugly into the top pocket of my denim jacket as my minute Nokia 8210 does. And, as ideal as the keyboard is, why revert to two hands, when one is sufficient on another keypad? At least that way, in the long run, textaholics will only get repetitive strain injury in one hand and not both.