HP iPAQ 510/514 Voice Messenger Review

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 3х3 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.