Pocket PC Thoughts: The New iPAQ Mobile Messenger: hw6915 - A Tough Package To Beat

In The Beginning
Many moons ago, in a dark and distant time before I was an Editor at this great site, I was obsessed with a new Pocket PC. The Pocket PC was the iPAQ h6315, a unit with details leaked for well over a year and finally released at the end of August, 2004. At that time, I wrote the following:

"I am the (for now) lone h6315 vote. After selling my I-mate, and carrying 2 devices again, I NEED to be converged soon! I'm also praying the functionality of the machine will make up for the puny processor / RAM."

I eagerly drove up to the closest T-Mobile store on the day the product was released, plunked down my cash, and went to my office play with my new toy. Quickly, though, I realized that the h6315 had some "issues". HP, eager to get the device out after numerous delays, hadn't fully tested everything as well as I'd have liked and I spent a few days just chasing bugs down. Next came the issue of that puny processor and RAM - and unfortunately the functionality didn't quite make up for it. While I used the h6315 as my daily driver for almost a year full-time, even I couldn't deny that HP needed a lot of work in the area of converged devices.

So about a year after the h6315 came out, as I sat reading my email on my 6th h6315 (T-Mobile got to replace a lot of units for me, from having 1 unit completely "melt down" and not boot to one that the vibrate motor had died, and everything in between), I saw information on HP's next converged device, the iPAQ Mobile Messenger hw6515. The hw6515 was a bit more tastefully designed than its older brother. With a square screen and built-in thumb keyboard (as opposed to the removable thumb keyboard on the h6315), the hw6515 seems destined to steal the show and prove that HP could put together one of these converged devices right. Heck, it even had GPS built-in! But all was not rosy for this device - it suffered from a timing issue. Namely, it came out right as Windows Mobile 5 devices were hitting the market, and with the older OS and lack of WiFi, it only was a mediocre success. The hw6515 was nice, but it wasn't something to write home about.

Now, two years after HP's first attempt, the hw6915 is rolling out. With limited availability as of this writing (available in Europe and Australia), the hw6915 seems to be the answer to all of our needs and the ultimate Treo and Blackberry killer. Through the graciousness of the Microsoft Mobile and Embedded Devices group, I was able to borrow a hw6915 for a few weeks and get to know the newest sibling of my former pal, the h6315!

A New Unit, Packed With Features
With all the features crammed into the hw6900 series, it's hard to know where to begin. Let's first take a look at the size and logistics of the unit. The unit is 4.65 x 2.8 x 0.71 inches, and weighs about 6.33 ounces. I lined it up below with my other devices to get some idea of how much bigger or smaller it is. While the JASJAR is clearly the king of size in this group, the hw6900 series is roughly 80% of the width of the JASJAR, making it quite a bit wider than many of the devices out there today. It's also just slightly thinner than the K-JAM, and when combined with the width, the depth gives a good feeling to my larger hands. It's a shame that those with larger hands are more at home with this device than those with smaller, given that thumb keyboards are typically easier to use for those with smaller appendages! Any way you look at it, though, the hw6900 series is not inordinately large or small. If it was approximately 2.4 inches wide I feel it would be perfect, but hey, you can't have everything in too small a package. Check out the pictures below for more comparison shots.


Figure 1: Side-by-side comparison. 5G iPod, i-Mate K-JAM, i-Mate JASJAR, HP hw6915


Figure 2: Left sides, JASJAR (bottom), iPAQ, iPod, K-JAM


Figure 3: Right sides


Figure 4: Tops


Figure 5: Bottoms