HP iPAQ 614 Review

Camera:

The HP iPAQ 614’s camera is 3-megapixel and is accompanied by an LED flash, located on the back of the device. There also is a tiny mirror to help you make self-portraits.

The interface starts in landscape mode for about 5-6 seconds and is quite simple. In the upper left corner, we have the remaining pictures/time indicator and in the right, there are four icons: for turning the flash on/off, for adjusting the capture mode and resolution, and the last one for switching the camera off. In the lower right part of the screen, there are 3 more icons: the first one takes you to pictures review, the next one is for switching between picture and video mode and the last one, leading to the settings. All icons are not big enough, therefore, hard to press with fingers.

The pictures are of a pretty low quality for a 3-megapixel camera. The colors are not well saturated and are monotonous, unreal with lots of noise and the overalls detail is slightly blurred. Some would probably expect more from such a camera, but let’s not forget that this is a business phone.


A camcorder is also present, with option to record in QVGA (320x240) and QCIF (176x144) and Sub-QCIF (128x96) resolutions in 3GP format. The quality of the videos is low, since the frame rate is low too – only 15 fps.

HP iPAQ 614 sample video at 320x240 pixels resolutions
* Note that due to codecs support, you may not be able to play the file.

HP iPAQ 614 comes with HP Photosmart mobile application preinstalled, with which managing and reviewing pictures is made easier. The interface is user-friendly and it won’t give you any trouble. The pictures are shown as a 3 x 4 grid, and underneath it, there is a field giving information about the selected image. On the bottom, there is a shortcut buttons bar. By using the icons you can get to the camera, folder browser, fullscreen slideshow preview, text comment, voice note, print, send as…, close and rotate 90 degrees left or right.


Mutlimedia:

iPAQ 614 is equipped with the standard mobile version of Windows Media Player. It is a multimedia player for music and video files. MP3 format is supported, as well as WMA and WAV. After updating the library with files, all supported types are found, and they can be added to playlists. This function is not well implemented and organizing them is quite hard. Songs can be viewed by artist, album and genre, as these are taken from the ID3 tag of the files.


While we were checking the player out, we figured out that the videos it reproduces best, are WMV with a resolution 320 x 240 and 256 kbps bitrate. Otherwise, at higher bitrates, it skips frames and the picture is behind the sound, which, considering the rich resources available, is strange.

The options buttons (next/previous, Play/Pause, etc.) are small and inconvenient both during Music and Video playback. When audio files are played, the video visualization window is still displayed, which is a lapse as it only takes up place on your screen. You can have these problems solved by adding new skins for the Media Player or by using another player, which can be installed additionally.


Software:

iPAQ 614 disposes of 128 MB RAM / 256 ROM Internal memory, which can be increased by an additional microSD card. In order to stop the applications loaded and to free up RAM memory, you will have to use the regular task manager, for which you should look in the menus.

WM for PPC provides unlimited capabilities for installing software. The only restrictions are the memory available and the hardware of the phone. The first problem is easily solved by getting a memory card, as there are microSD cards with capacity of up to several GB.

Every WM6 Professional phone comes with programs that are modified, “pocket” versions known PC applications. Such programs are the mobile versions of (Microsoft) Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Internet Explorer, Explorer, Media Player, etc. The Office applications allow you to view and edit documents of the most-used types and the phone opens them without any error. Even a complicated Excel document with a few sheets is not a problem. The iPAQ also has ClearVue PDF Reader preloaded, which is similar to the Adobe, like the Office works flawless. We opened a big document (1.5MB) and scrolling through pages, when zoomed to 100% is almost immediate. Many more programs could be downloaded from third party sources.


Using programs, requiring a lot of resources, such as Skype, were not a problem. The voices are clear with no interruptions, but sometimes the sound volume is not enough and you will have to raise your voice, so people can hear you. The only drawback here is the location of the speakerphone, on the back of the iPAQ, so in order to hear what’s being said, you have to turn the phone around.


GPS:

HP iPAQ 614 comes preloaded with Google Maps. Using the application and the built-in GPS, you’ll easily find your way, wherever you go. This type of positioning system also uses data traffic, for faster satellite coordination. Yet, it can perform as a regular GPS, but in cloudy days, the system will have a hard time calculating your position.

At cold start, using an Internet connection, the GPS needs about 3 minutes, to determine your position, and at hot start – under a minute. These results, although a bit slower than the SirfStar III devices, are quite good.