HP iPAQ 510/514 Voice Messenger Review

In February HP presented its new mobile telephone, traditionally using the Windows Mobile operating system. What is not typical about the brand here is that their first WM6 product makes use of the version for devices without touch (Standard) instead of the touch-screen one (Professional).


Though loaded with quite a few features (quad-band GSM/EDGE, WiFi, micro SD, MP camera), the HP iPAQ 500 series Voice Messenger is subject to certain compromises with a view to achieving an affordable price. Typically for the brand, the telephone is offered in the “Series” form rather than as a single model; the 500 series includes the 510 and 514 models – entirely identical, but the first designed for the European market and the latter – for the American one. We will refer to these as “iPAQ” or “iPAQ 500” here for the sake of brevity.

iPAQ 500 features a comparatively conservative but attractive in its own way design. It looks in no-way like a fashionable telephone but is rather neutral, which is appropriate for a smartphone of this class. It feels comfortably in the hand and is also easily kept in a pocket due to its compact size.

Model	Dimension (Inches)	Dimension (MM)	Weight (OZ)	Weight (Gramms)
HP iPAQ 500	4.2" x 1.9" x 0.6"	107 x 48.6 x 16.3	3,6	102
HTC S710 VOX	4.0" x 2.0" x 0.7"	101 x 50 x 17.7	4,2	120
i-mate SPL	4.5" x 1.9" x 0.5"	114.5 x 49 x 12	3,6	102
Toshiba G500	3.8" x 1.9" x 0.9"	96 x 49 x 22.9	4,8	135

The plastic of the body is smooth on the outside and good-looking but, we would rather the device had rubber coating on the back panel for a more secure hold with moist hands. The battery lid has an unpleasant play.

HP 500 is standard candy-bar telephone. The manufacturer’s logo and the loudspeaker are at the top of the upper panel and immediately below is the 2.0” display. It is one of the main compromises of this model. The resolution is untypically low for a smartphone – 173 x 220 instead of 240 x 320 pixels. It not only leads to a poorer image quality (also brought about by the lack of brightness and the unrealistic and non-saturated colours), but may cause problems when the matter in question is OPERATION of the device as a smartphone.

The low resolution is a major inconvenience for reading texts or using an Internet browser. It is also a considerable drawback that applications, set for QVGA displays, are inapplicable. Thus, despite being a WM6 telephone, the only possible applications for the iPAQ will be those, intended for use with WM telephones with resolution 176 x 220 pixels. Other similar units are the HTC S310 and some other older models.

The keypad has a black background and transparent buttons, adding to the exquisite and elegant appearance of the device. The white backlighting, which is most neutral and suitable for this kind of telephone, also makes for this effect. The keypad is rather narrow though, diminishing the button size. We mainly encountered problems with the software buttons and the answer/reject ones, often pressing the “receiver” instead of the former, or vice versa. Despite its small size, the 5-directional d-pad is easily pressed in all directions. Though quite small, the numeric keys feature a good relief and this was really for the first time that we could feel button 5’s bulge trouble-free. They are easy to press but slightly “over-sinking”, which can make one uncertain if the keys were actually pressed.

On the right there is the Voice Control button and on the left – a 2.5 mm socket for stereo headphones/handsfree, a hotswappable slot for micro SD cards and the volume control rocker. The computer connection and charging is done via the miniUSB port on the bottom.

Interface:

Despite its non-standard resolution, the unit relies on the traditional Windows Mobile 6 Standard operating system. Therefore it has a lot in common with other models that make use of it – HTC Vox for example.

As a default, the home screen shows system information, shortcuts for recently used applications and active stand-by screen that shows other information, for instance, Upcoming events. It can be personalized by themes to look completely different and several Windows variants are a nice example that can be changed from the menu: Settings – Home Screen – Home Screen Layout. The possibilities for personalization are almost endless.

The main menu is shown as a grid of 3x3 icons with shortcuts to numerical keypad. A scoll on the right indicates you can move down and up, to see more options in the menu. Sub-menus are visualised as vertical lists.

Phonebook:

Searching and dialing a number from the phonebook has never been easier. You can start inputting the number or the name you want from the homescreen (no matter if it is first or last name), but if you press the key for the corresponding character just once, it is as if the system for predictive text input is turned on. For instance, if you want to dial “Neo”, you have to dial 636 (6-MNO, 3-DEF, 6-MNO) and almost immediately the phone will show you all matching names. With “down” button select the contact you wish and dial it with the green receiver. The “earpiece volume” should be at minimum or step 1-2, because otherwise the sounds at key-press are extremely loud.

Looking through the phonebook is possible by means of list of names. You can search here too, but only by name (not by number) and the phone will not display which symbol you have input, so if you misspell one you will not be able to see what to clear (with back/clear button)and to edit it.

A long list with many fields is available when you add a new contact. You can find here many phone numbers, addresses and e-mails, etc. But here (like Pocket PC System) you cannot add two phone numbers of the same type – for instance, two mobile phone numbers. You can also attach a personal photo and a music file to each contact, but the displayed photo is so small when you receive a call or when you make a call that it is pointless, though there is plenty of space on the screen for a big photo.


By pressing the green receiver from the home screen you can see the call history of the phone. You can easily add a number from here as a new contact or as a new number for already saved contact.

Organizer:

In the phone menu you will find the electronic calendar where you can save your appointments. They have options for subject, starting/ending time/all day event, location, notes. You can use options like: reminder (PRIOR NOTICE 1/5/10/15/30 minutes, 1 hour/day/week), recurrence (Once, Every (same-day-of-the-week), Day (same-date) of every month, Every (same date-date-and-month) for every year, sensitivity (normal, personal, private, confidential). You can also add attendees (required or optional) from your contacts where e-mail addresses have been added and where meeting requests will be sent.

Examining the calendar can be done by day/week/month and you can choose starting day for the week and the week duration (5-6-7-day week). The appointments for the day are clearly shown in their time limits, so you can see your free time at a glance. This is one of the new things of WM6 compared to WM5.

You have Tasks menu, where to-do items can be added. For a given Task you can set subject, priority (normal, low, high), start/due date, reminder (to be notified if it’s due), category (business, holiday, personal, seasonal) and note. The Task can have recurrence (Once, Every (same-day-of-the-week), Day (same-date) of every month, Every (same date-date-and-month) for every year and sensitivity (normal, personal, private, confidential). Examining the tasks in a list you can easily see which of them are finished and which are not. The tasks options can be: sort by (status, priority, subject, start date, due date) or filter (all, recent, no categories, active, completed).



In the Accessories menu is located the calculator, still lacking a scientific option. Here are also a few HP applications, and also three managers: Resource, Space and Task that help for managing the system resources of the phone.

File Explorer is the mobile version of Windows Explorer and it helps you to explore the content of the phone memory and the card memory, reaching even to the system folders and files. And you are not limited to use only the phone types of files, but you can see all files. There is no option for selecting several files together (hence you cannot work with them at the same time).

Voice recorder is can capture voice notes. There is no limitation of the time duration, which depends only on the available free memory.

Voice commands are switched by holding the right-side button. Loading of the interface takes 2 – 3 seconds, sometimes more. From here, one can make a call to a telephone book contact or dial a number through voice number input. Voice commands for composing SMS/email/audio email are also possible. The commands are speaker independent.

Messaging:

Like other Windows Mobile phones, all messages are in a common menu – Messaging. Here you can find all text, multimedia and e-mail messages. When you write something over again, T9 predictive text input system can help you. It can be used with QWERTY hardware keyboard too.

Just a few steps away is the option to add your e-mail account (POP3 or IMAP) and to use your e-mail account on your mobile phone. Very nice extra is that the phone can try to get the email settings automatically from the internet, and so we configured our Gmail Account by entering only the username and password – the OS founds the other settings on its own. We also tried it with Yahoo! and MSN (Hotmail) accounts. Windows Mobile 6 already supports HTML formatted e-mails. The client is very similar to the Outlook on a computer, you can filter your inbox to see just some results, reply to message or forward it to other person. The support for attachments allows you to download or send one, in addition to the text body. The phone can be set to synchronize with your company Exchange Server.


As standard, Windows Mobile comes preloaded with the mobile version of Live! Messenger (MSN). Windows Live account will be added in Messaging when you add your e-mail account.



Connectivity:

The iPAQ 500 is a quad-band GSM, which allows it to be used in all continents.Supporting EDGE data, it uses faster internet connection than it would use with GPRS, which is the previous level. Still, it is not 3G phone, which would enable even faster internet connection.

We are happy that the standard jacks are used – miniUSB for computer connection and 2.5mm jack for music.
For local connection you can use Bluetooth as well. The supported version is 1.2 and using it we experienced transfer speeds of 42 KB per second, which means a MP3 song (5MB for example) transfers for 2 minutes. Multimedia profiles are also supported so you can listen to stereo music wireless.

The phone features an integrated Wi-Fi module for wireless network connection, which also allows for using the internet of that local network. One can easily connect to a home/office network, or any public place where “hotspot” service is supported. Wi-Fi transfer speeds are much higher than GPRS/EDGE ones, and using it for Internet and streaming is not a problem.

You can also connect it to a computer by a USB cable plugged in the bottom port of the phone. An installed Microsoft Active Sync on your PC is required in order to achieve an easy synchronization of the phone with Microsoft Outlook at your will. The program allows for synchronizing of the contacts, calendar entries, To-Dos.

Internet:

As a whole, the browser is not an excellent one, so viewing full-size pages (with 1024 pixel resolution for instance) requires quite an effort at 240 pixel-wide display, let alone at iPAQ’s even smaller176 pixel one, which, of course, will take even more scrolling. It is advisable that you use the “one column view” option to optimize page appearance at the cost of losing part of the content.


Once again, resolution is a drawback, but not that serious in case you use a more modern browser like Microsoft Deepfish, offering a real page review with zoom in/out options. Unfortunately, the final version of this browser has not been released yet.

Camera interface

Camera:

As every contemporary telephone, the HP iPAQ 500 features a built-in digital camera. Its lenses are located on the back next to the loudspeaker, the inscription stating the resolution (1.3 megapixels), and a small mirror.

Starting the camera takes 3 seconds and is done through the icon in the main menu or from a shortcut one. Its interface is fairly simple, reminding that of Nokia E65, although the two telephones have different operating systems. The viewfinder takes no more than half the screen and settings can be selected from a text-structured menu. Maximum resolution is 1280 x 1024 pixels, whereas the video’s can be up to 176 x 144, rendering it senseless because of the low value.

Recording a picture after pressing the snap-button will last 7 seconds, which is sometimes too slow to pick the right time of the next shot.

Quality is acceptable and even above average for this type of cameras. Excessive light can lead to problems with exposure and colors, but one should not expect wonders from it. You had better refrain from taking pictures in a dark environment since there is even no LED to cast light at short distances.


You can examine your pictures in the album, where you can see thumbnails shown as a grid of 3x3 and scroll function. Once you have opened a photo, you can use the zoom or save it as wallpaper on the homescreen and even to edit it using Rotate, Crop, and Auto Correct.

Multimedia:

Like all the other Windows phones, the iPAQ has a pocket version of Windows Media Player, which is a combined audio and video player. You can activate it directly from its shortcut key on the left side. In library you will find all your music saved in the phone and in the memory card and sorted by Artist, Album and Genre.

During playback of a song the interface is almost empty because it is also used for visualization of video files. Here you will see the album art cover if your songs have one attached. The buttons are small, but they only replace the functions of the D-pad. By using its directions you can forward and backward in a certain track, to change tracks, to Play/pause or to control the volume. The player has options for Shuffle/Repeat and it is capable of creating Playlists.

Windows Media Player 10 is capable of playing the following files:

AUDIO: .MP3, .WMA

VIDEO: .WMV, .ASF, H.263 - .3GP and .MP4

The phone doesn’t play H.264 videos in QVGA resolution, plays only their sound. It opened small .WMV file with no problem.

Software:

iPAQ 500 has 128 MB ROM, 64 MB RAM and the memory can be extended by microSD cards. There are only two preloaded games that come together with Windows Mobile 6 – Solitaire and Bubble Breaker, but new applications can be added thanks to the Operating System and the support of JAVA MIDP 2.0.

As all other Windows Mobile 6 devices, HP iPAQ 500 comes with Microsoft Office package including the mobile versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Though, it does not have a touch display, the new Office applications enable it to edit files, which is very convenient. For instance, you receive the file by e-mail, edit it and send it back.

The Office applications run very well and it is no problem to visualize complex files, for example, complex excel sheet. Loading a big file (1.5MB) takes a few seconds, but is not a problem. Unfortunately, PDF reader is not coming preloaded.

Performance:

Although nowadays the phones are pocket computers or multimedia devices with lots of additional functionality, in our opinion the performance as a phone (a device from which you talk) is still very important for the overall rating of the device. Due to this, we test every phone’s signal reception to compare it with the others and see if it will be usable in areas with fringe coverage. The iPAQ performed adequately, scoring the just the middle (5 out of 10) which leaves space for improvement for the next models of the manufacturer.

The manufacturer rates the battery for up to 6.5 hours of talk time and our test proved this, and we were able to squeeze even 7 hours. This is an excellent result for a WM smartphone.

The sound quality during a call is very good but unfortunately not very high in volume. The voices are clear and our remark is that the low frequencies of the voice are slightly increased, and the voices sound thicker than they really are. On the other side they hear you also clearly but also not very strong. Due to the not very strong speaker, you may have problems in noisy environment.

Conclusion:

The HP iPAQ is a well-packed smartphone with pocket size and pleasant design that isn’t a fashion-attraction, but also isn’t ugly. We like that it has WM6 instead of 5, and built-in WiFi and powerful battery, but don’t encourage using displays with small resolution, as smaller amount of applications are available this way. If you don’t plan on loading lots of 3rd party apps and can live with those available in the 176x220 resolution, this one is an excellent choice. But if you require QVGA resolution, look at the VOX which will offer similar functionality, better display and QWERTY, but at higher price tag and bigger size.