iPAQ 210 finally ships and gets reviewed by Brighthand

First review of iPAQ 210 review by Brighthand

While this review answers general look and feel questions about this device, it, unfortunately, misses to answer some important questions that any user of hx4700 would find obvious.

- How filesys behaves? Is it noticeable at all? How often it kicks in? What is an effect of having a full internal flash?

- How responsive is GUI?  Due to slow flash in hx4700 it was too slow for most users' tastes.

- How fast in fact are the SDHC and CF slots? They have been PAINFULLY slow in hx4700. Would be interesting to see speed of copying a 1.4GB movie over WiFi to SD and to CF cards.

- How Opera Mobile, the best WM browser to date, runs?

- How fast is WiFi connection?  In previous model, it never reached even theoretical half of theoretical 11 Mbps. So, how well the new G connection works?

- So it has no plastic screen protector? I guess so, since it never appeared on photos.

Big yawn. The device that would have been revolutionary 2 years ago, or would still be pretty good a year ago. Something that I would contemplate buying just 6 months ago. Everything changed since I got Raon Everun. Now I do not need to waste my time looking for WinMo applications that would suit my needs best, since I already have a full blown Windows XP in a my pocket.  And this thing has a got a shiny, plasticy body instead of bomb proof magnesium alloy of the previous model...

Does it mean that this device is worthless to me? Not at all, I still think that it could act as a good MID, a device you can throw around a house, use for occasional surfing, chatting , voip, casual gaming, give to kids to watch cartoons from server over WLAN. I would not use it as a PIM or Office on the go kind of device anymore, since that is better left to the combo of UMPC and a smartphone.

p.s. HP, for god's sake, ship a sample to Werner.

My Worst Mobile Experience :(

Surprisingly enough, I can easily identify my worst mobile experience and unfortunately, it is same for all mobile devices that I ever worked with.

On all devices from Sony Ericsson, Nokia, HP and Raon (and actually all other laptops I used, mostly Lenovo Thinkpads) Bluetooth stack just crashes after some period of use. It takes longer on some devices, or considerably less on others, but anyway, Bluetooth inevitably crashes leading to the need to restart, reboot, sometimes even take out a battery from a frozen device.

Pocket PCs before WM5 were notorios for lack of system drivers memory, and after half a dozen of BT On/Off cycles, BT drivers would fail to load to memory.

Sony Ericsson phones would hang if phone call came during BT connection (file transmission, dialup, syncing)

Nokia handles well under load, but after several cycles of using it with Everun as dialup modem, there comes a moment when it stops connecting to UMPC, until rebooted.

Raon, just as any other XP or Vista computer, doesn't handle well going through several cycles of sleep or hibernation and guess what, at some moment when you need to get online, BT either doesn't start, or connects but doesn't load anything from the phone.

It is my biggest disappointment, that despite being a very old technology, BT stack implementation still remains buggy across various manufacturers. One day I will switch to built in HSDPA or WiMax just because of this.

WM6 for iPAQ hx4700

Custom WM6 ROM scene is flourishing, and thanks to several russian developers, most notably kozhura at 4pda.ru, this goodness have reached owners of ipaq hx4700. At this moment the ROM is too buggy, but if previous experience with WM5 AKU 3.5.2 is any indication of debugging speed, then we shall see a good quality ROM in 4-6 weeks time.

HP iPAQ 200, the long needed successor to hx4700

The long awaited successor to hx4700 is on the horizon.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/06/hp-unleashes-ipaq-series-100-and-200-pdas/

Judging its technical specs, it looks as a marginal improvement over it, not a revolutionary one. But it has a potential of making this the most powerful PDA ever. (And the last ever?)

1. OS upgraded from WM5 to WM6. However, custom WM6 ROMs are already circulating at xda-developers (orginally made by kozhura @ 4pda.ru forums).
2. Display is the same.
3. SD slot will support SDHC.
4. Physical d-pad is back. A definite improvement.
5. Bluetooth is 2.0+EDR (3 times faster and, presumably, more energy efficient. The previous implementation of Bluetooth in hx4700 was all but efficient. Energy consumption tested by Menneisyys was a disaster, gobbling mAh even at idle rpms.
6. WiFi g in addition to b. This means that watching VGA (DVD quality) movies from remote server over WIFI will be a smooth experience.
7. More efficient VGA acceleration whatever this means.
8. Increased RAM 128Mb (or not really increased? there is mixed information in HP PR materials, with 128 seeming a prevailing number). It would be a shame to not have 128MB in this PDA, as long and painful experience with hx4700 proved that 64MB is not enough for keeping several important applications (like navigation, browser, office programs, etc.) open at the same time and thus, quickly available at any second.

However, it is too early to state that the device will be more useful than its predecessor, before we get results of READ-WRITE benchmarks of production units. Hx4700 had a notoriously slow SD,CF slots and built in Flash read/write times, that were crippling its performance to a halt at times under WM5.

I would love to get my hands on this device for a more in-depth review.

RIP ipaq hx4700

My ipaq sank in bathtub during my recent trip to Stockholm couple of days ago. Even after drying it for the last 2 days, I could not reanimate it. Tought luck.

This iPaq hx4700 has properly served me for 2 years, going with me through upgrades from WM2003 onto WM5, it survived memory expanding surgery at PPCTECHs and came back with 128M RAM. Then thanks to Mamaich, I figured out how to increased pagepool and it became even faster than ever. And just a month ago, I upgraded it to excellent WM5 AkU3.5.2. It has seen GPRS, EDGE, UMTS and HSDPA connections, and I had to tweak its bluetooth speed limits to keep in line with faster mobile networks. It has been a great book reader for my trips to Turkey and Egypt. Its 8GB Compact Flash card has kept lots of cartoons and movies for my 3 kids who got accostumed to falling asleep holding it in their hands. With GPS and TomTom navigation software it is been a trusty guide to driving on the wrong side of the road in UK, and to driving through 2M wide city streets in Sicily. And I even used it for having a mobile Skype and Gtalk while driving around Riga, thanks to an unlimited HSDPA connection in his little brother, Nokia 6120.

Did I mention games? Skyforce, Warfare Inc, Bejewelled?

And last, but the most important, it has become my window on a world during last 2 years. I got so much used to reading from my palms, that even laptops and nice desktop computers could not compete with this experience.

R.I.P, old friend

AKU352 for iPaq hx4700, with A2DP now

Good times keep rolling! In development for some 3 weeks now, AKU352 for iPaq hx4700, have reached the stage that it is finally perfectly usable, and even A2DP support has been fixed. Now there is no reason not to update. The main plague of previous versions, namely filesys compaction thread and overall slow performance of the system, have been solved. Compared to earlier firmwares, unit is much more responsive. ActiveSync scheduling problem is gone. Still you need to apply Navpoint tweak. And I highly recommend increasing page pool values to 16 MB on devices with extended RAM (128 MB).

More information is available on xda-developers forums. Original thread (in Russian) can be found at 4pda.ru forums.



---- 
Sent using a Sony Ericsson mobile phone

Using Blogger on VGA Pocket PC with Opera, Minimo, Picsel and Pocket IE

After setting up blog on PC, I just had to try it on my Mobile Device too.
I have iPaq hx4700 with VGA screen, WM5, and several web browsers - Internet Explorer Mobile, Opera 8.60, Picsel Browser (thanks VJ@xdadev) and nightly build of Minimo (1/1/2007).

PIE's rendering of the page is so ugly, that I gave up trying to blog through it immediately.


I did not manage to authorize into Blogger through Picsel. Some script problems I guess.


Minimo also failed at google account authorization stage.


So, this post was created on Opera. Beautiful rendering. Only some formating buttons (Bold, Italics, etc.) are missing from the form, compared to the PC rendering.



So, if you want to use Blogger on mobile device, Opera is the only choice at this moment.