For months now, we have backed the idea that PDAs are fighting their last battle with smartphones and that they will probably lose it. The phones' more and more complex specifications are not justifying anymore the acquisition of the old PDA.

And still, despite analyzes, previous sale records and all reasoning, PDAs are still on the market. According to the information provided by Gartner, PDA sales recorded in this quarter are much better than the ones a year ago. In fact, the number of PDAs retailed in the last period sets a new record producers were not expecting.

Gartner has announced that the total PDA sales have increased with 25% (amounting to 3.4 million units) in the first quarter of this year.

And what's even stranger is that this increase takes place in a period when the prices of PDAs have gone up with 15%, the average cost for such a device being around 406 USD, the biggest price since 2000.

The feature that attracts the most is the possibility of checking the e-mail in the same manner you would do with your desktop computer, and RIM and Blackberry have taken this service to the highest level of performance and stability.

The second most important feature of PDAs is the possibility of communicating through instant messaging, for this purpose RIM associating with Yahoo Messenger.

If PDAs and smartphones keep fighting for supremacy, the winner might be a hybrid product that combines features of both devices, like the Nokia 7710 model.