Read on for our full review of the T-Mobile Wing. If you’re on T-Mobile, this is your best bet for a PocketPC device, but is it good enough to draw people over to the carrier?

(I’ll spend a bit of time here comparing the Wing to the T-Mobile MDA - there’s a fuller Smackdown here, though. Check it out.)

The T-Mobile Wing (codenamed T-Mobile Atlas, henceforth just “Wing”) is another slider from HTC, meaning that it has a standard 240x320 screen, a few buttons beneath it, and a sliding keyboard. It’s a Windows Mobile 6 Professional-edition device, meaning it has a touchscreen and generally more power than the standard edition WM6 devices. It replaces the old, ugly, and underpowered T-Mobile MDA. I call the old MDA “underpowered” with a bit of chagrin, because spec-wise, the two are actually not all that dissimilar.

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Now that the T-Mobile Wing is out and available in the stores, there’s probably a healthy amount of MDA users out there wondering if it’s worth the price to upgrade. Now, far be it from me to tell you how to spend your money - 500 bucks before contract discounts is a lot of money. And on paper, the Wing doesn’t exactly blow the MDA out of the water. Take a peek at what hasn’t really been upgraded:

• Processor: the same, though the Wing is clocked a whole 6MHz faster at 201MHz
• Weight: The Wing weighs 1 gram less.
• Memory: The Wing actually has less available memory to the user. MDA has 50mb storage and 47.46Mmb program compared to the Wing’s 41.42mb storage and 43.8mb program. It’s even worse in that the Wing seems to eat up more program memory after a fresh boot with the T-Mobile MyFaves app running (and it wants to always be running.
• Screen: The same
• Data: Both are quad-band EDGE phones with WiFi and Bluetooth 2.0. Heck, the MDA has infrared and the Wing does not.
• Battery Life: The Wing’s battery is smaller, at 1130 mAh to the MDA’s 1250mAh.
• Audio Out: The MDA has a 2.5mm audio jack, the Wing makes you use HTC’s funny little mini-usb adapter.

What specs are better? Well the Wing has a 2 megapixel camera, the MDA’s is 1.3. That’s about it, actually, except…

So the main differences come down to two things: Windows Mobile 6 on the Wing and the Wing’s improved form factor. I won’t get into WM6 too much here (it’s better, but in my opinion it won’t knock your socks off); instead let’s look at the form factor differences. Read on for a photo-fortified-form-factor smackdown between the Wing and the MDA.

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Not to be mean, or anything, but I've found the Dash to be snappier and more powerful than the old warhorse slider, the T-Mobile MDA. The MDA was my first slider, its big screen is nice and all, but the processor always felt underpowered. It's still a pretty good WM5 device because it has so many freaking buttons that you can customize to do what you'd like. Set it next to an 8525, though, and you'll start to see why T-Mobile suddenly isn't selling the MDA on its site anymore.

alas, the time has come to kiss the MDA goodbye it seems. As such, the handset has completely disappeared from T-Mobile's website. Is this just a short-term omission or is the MDA gone for good? Is this a sign that a replacement is near?

Read: MDA gone from T-Mobile's website - Engadget Mobile

And now, an open letter:

Dearest T-Mobile,

You're really hurting us power users. First you faddle around instead of bringing us a proper 3G network (but I hold out hope they'll have something within 6 months), now you're killing off your high-end PPC phone. Great customer service will only get you so far, my back-of-the-carrier-pack friend. Quit giving all the joy to Germans and give the Americans some. Those Germans are too dour to properly appreciate it, anyway.

Love,
Dieter

A great article was posted on Friday over at c|net, describing how "Carl Banzhof, VP and chief technology evangelist for McAfee, outlined a scenario in which mobile phones--not laptops--could be used to sniff wireless packets". The upshot is that he took a T-Mobile MDA and made it look like a WiFi access point - i.e. showing how a malicious smartphone user could "trick" you into logging onto the internet via the MDA, thereby exposing all of your communications to packet sniffing.

I read stories like this and it makes me complain a little less about Microsoft devoting resources to security on Windows Mobile instead of "the pretty."

You still see the Internet, except all your personal data is now flowing through the criminal's machine as a man-in-the-middle intermediary.

Read: Security Watch: Hacking with smart phones - CNET reviews