by Playfuls Staff |
13th February 2007
At 3GSM world conference in Barcelona Hewlett-Packard presented their latest smartphone powered by Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6. Unfortunately, the new Voice Messenger (as they called it) does not impress very much.[more]
The good parts of the phone are the lifespan of the battery (up to six hours of continuous talk time on a fully charged battery, making it one of the top smartphones in this domain, but
not the leader as HP claims). It also features voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) capabilities, "push" email in rich HTML format and voice commands. Besides being able to select contacts by voice commands, it appears that the new gadget can “write” mails while you dictate them- a useful feature for drivers or simply lazy people. Users also can listen to email and text messages, navigate through phone and calendar tasks and speak to start applications. The 20 voice prompts programmed into the device allow the owner to do things like navigate phone functions.
HP iPAQ 510 is able to work in a quad-band GSM environment with GPRS/EDGE data. It also boasts with 802.11b/g WiFi connectivity, with a UMA client available for the device, and Bluetooth v1.2 included for short range connectivity.
The Windows Mobile 6 built-in Office Mobile offers clients the possibility of viewing their e-mails inside Outlook Mobile, of course in the rich HTML format mentioned earlier.
Just as any other smartphone from 2007, the HP iPaq 510 can capture photos or short videos on its 64MB of memory; it can also store Java games and play short movies. The memory can be expanded with a 128 MB microSD card.
Now the bad parts. It has no 3G capabilities, which in modern days is quite a set back. It has a tiny 2" TFT LCD display with 220x176 resolution, which makes this phone model look as if it was built a year ago (consider that most of today’s smartphones have at least a QVGA 320x240 resolution). Its camera is only 1.3 Megapixel, making both photos and movies look quite blurry on the small screen. It has no GPS and the 200MHz OMAP850 processor is quite slow (probably to save the lithium-ion battery).
All in all, the only
really attractive thing about HP’s product could be the price, although the company has not yet released the phone's price or disclosed which carriers will offer it.
