When the press release of a brand new PDA phone proudly declares that it has a "boldly affordable price tag", you tend not to have high expectations of its looks. Well, I didn't. But the HTC 3400i surprised me with a superior build which, dare I say, is comparable to phones double its price. Instead of the cheap, plastic affair that I was expecting, the 3400i is not only sturdy but tastefully designed too. It's even cheaper than the entry-level Palm Centro. So when it looks like a steal, naturally, you will start to wonder if there are any compromises on its features. Unfortunately, there are a few. The phone is a basic GSM, GPRS, Edge Quad-band phone; it doesn't have 3G or 3.5G or Wi-Fi and its 2.8-inch TFT-LCD with 240 x 320 pixels and 65,536 colors isn't exactly the best in the market either. But on the software front, the 3400i doesn't fare too badly, with Windows Mobile 6 Professional, Internet Explorer Mobile, Office Mobile, Windows Media Player 10 Mobile and Window Live Messenger. I also have no complaints about its performance. The 3400i was nifty when I was running standard work applications like Office Mobile. For music entertainment, the phone doesn't have a standard earphone connector nor does it come with earphones. And the speaker phone fared poorly when I tried making a phone call on it: Whenever I tried to pump up the volume, the audio became so muffled that it was difficult to carry out a proper phone conversation. But I was surprised that it was able to capture pretty decent shots with its 2-megapixel camera.