The product was originally announced on January 10, 2000, at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris,[1] and was released in the UK in August 2001.

There are five physical buttons on the front of the Mondo, located under the display to toggle standby, and to provide shortcuts to the phone, messages, calendar and contacts features.

A jog wheel on the left spine of the phone controls volume and another button starts and stops audio recordings.

Ilaria Santi writing in ZDNet concluded that the Trium Mondo is a "well-featured handheld/mobile phone" and that the price at launch was not unreasonable for the type of device.

[5] In the New Straits Times, Matthew Mok highlighted the ease of having the PDA and phone features combined in one product over connecting two standalone devices but noted the lack of expansion slots compared to normal PDAs and the omission of a colour screen.