HP iPAQ 614 Review

Introduction:

The American corporation Hewlett-Packard is famous for producing personal and mobile computers, as well as all peripheral electronics. That’s not all though, because even mobile phones are included in their product line, mainly targeting business users. We have the opportunity to present to your attention, one of the latest models, the HP iPAQ 600 Series Business Navigator, and more precisely the European version - iPAQ 614. It is a multifunctional, candybar, Windows Mobile Professional device with a few options to control it. The device is capable of 3G world roaming, as it is quad-band GSM and tri-band UMTS/HSDPA. Its specifications are really up to the standards and judging by them, the device is a quite interesting solution for the business community. The high-end Eten X800 and HTC TyTN II are the rivals of iPAQ 614.

In the box you can find:

• HP iPAQ 614 Business Navigator + stylus
• Lithium-Polymer 1590 mAh battery
• AC Charger adapter
• 1 mini-USB synchronization/charge cable
• Wired stereo headphones
• Getting Started Guide
• HP iPAQ Companion CD
• iPAQ Choice brochure/voucher

The iPAQ Choice brochure, which you will find in the set, has the role of a voucher. If you enter the number on its back, while registering on-line at www.ipaqchoice.com, you will receive 4 points, which you can use to purchase various accessories or software.

Design:

The iPAQ’s design is sophisticated and it carries the very idea of the phone – high functionality and comfort at work. The lack of edges (rounded) and the classic black color, which covers almost the entire phone, contribute for the pleasant appearance. Only the line encircling the phone is grey. Quality plastic has been used to manufacture the phone, which when touched feels as if rubber-coated.


It is quite big - 4.60 x 2.37 x 0.69 inches (117 x 60.3 x 17.5 mm) and 5.1 oz (145 g), but it’s not that bad when compared to the Eten X800 or the HTC TyTN II. The iPAQ still appears pretty thick if you look at its profile. Carrying the device in the pockets of your jeans is quite unpleasant and it would have been much more convenient if there were a belt case/clip included in the set. We think that this is a must have accessory for this type of phones and we recommend that you get one.


You can compare the HP iPAQ 614 to many other phones, using PhoneArena's Visual Size Compare tool.

Standard for a candybar device, on the front side, we have a 2.8” TFT display (240x320-pixels, 65k colors). The brightness and contrast of the screen are quite strong, but not enough to make the images depicted on it fully visible in a broad daylight. If they were the maximum possible, the device might still be usable in such conditions.

You will not find a video calling camera over it because there is no such present, which is strange. There we find the company logo, the speaker, and the two LEDs.

Below the screen, are located the two soft keys, shortcuts and the numeric keypad, which is as one. Although the keys of the latter have a lightly expressed relief, they are easy to operate and their design fits the overall vision of the phone. The power button, strangely located in the lower right part of the keypad and not on the side as in most PPC phones, is hard to use if you use the phone singlehandedly.

Navigation buttons are missing and they have been replaced by the „Smart Touch navigation wheel.” This method of work is quite convenient, especially if you operate the phone using one hand only, and you don’t even need to use the display. The new navigation feature is a touch sensitive circle, located in the middle of the numeric keypad. By sliding your finger over it in clockwise or counterclockwise direction, you can scroll through menus rather quickly. Another way to do that, is to place your finger on number 5 and move it in the direction desired (up/down/left right), but that is quite slow. It would have been nice if the inside part, for example, had the role of a confirmation button, but now you have to use the Enter on the side. If you don’t like this type of navigation or is bothering you, it can be turned off, by pressing and holding the OK button on the left for about 3 seconds. An icon on the display and a sound will be heard to confirm the action.

On the left side of the iPAQ 614, you will find the ОК and Voice command buttons, and between them a 3-way thumb wheel, which can also be used for navigation. When tilted up or down the latter can be used as a scroll wheel and as a confirmation key when pushed. In the lower left side is positioned the telescopic stylus and the strap hole, which you could use to attach a chain or a phone jewel. On the right side, we have the external antenna slot and the camera shortcut.


Looking at the phone’s top, we note something strange. There is a silent mode button, similar to RIM BlackBerry devices. Unfortunately, all side buttons are small and do not have a well-expressed relief, which makes them hard to feel and press.

On the bottom of the phone, we see the reset button and the miniUSB slot, used for charging or connecting to a PC.

The camera, accompanied by the LED flash and the loudspeaker are located in the upper backside of the device. The battery lid takes up the rest of the back. Under the big battery are the SIM card and the microSD slot.

Interface:

HP iPAQ 614 Business Navigator is a Windows Mobile 6 Professional based device and as a whole, its software, and possibilities are almost entirely identical to the other phones using the same operating system. Nothing will surprise you if you have previously used the OS. You should bear in mind that certain problems and positive features are present not only in this phone or the make’s models, but for the models using this operating system (WM6 Professional).

HP has added some innovations though. One of those is the HP shortcuts menu, which by default can be activated from the right soft key. When it’s done loading, on the screen, you can see 10 shortcuts leading to various applications, but those can be customized. Each one has a number (0-9), which is connected to the numeric keypad. So, if you want to start Google Maps marked with number 4, you can press the key with the corresponding digit and the application will load. Other lighter personalization options are the screensaver and the HP Help and Support, HP iPAQ Tips and Remote Desktop Mobile application. The last one lets you manage remote computers, if you have to.

PhoneBook:

The phone book of iPAQ 614 is identical to the other WM6 phones. The number of contacts that can be added is not restricted and depends only on the memory available. All contacts are displayed as a list; each field consists of the name and the number of the contact, while a letter placed beside them indicates what the type of the number is (w – work; m – mobile, etc.). Pictures are not displayed even if there is one attached to the contact.

The line displayed at the top of the screen is a search field, which initiates a name and number search on entering a symbol – the more symbols you type, the more accurate the match is – it’s quite useful! This one searches all names entered for the contact, but if you want to find an acquaintance by other field like “company” for example, you have to use the “Search” application. There are tabs with different letters (divided in groups of three) just below it. This way you can arrange the contacts so that only the ones beginning with a given letter are displayed. These two search features are quite handy and they make finding a particular contact in the phonebook very quick.

Too bad that’s not the case when adding a new name to the phonebook; the device offers way too many capabilities, including multiple work and home numbers, but there’s only one for mobile –something quite inconvenient as that’s exactly where we wanted to add multiple numbers to. The numerous address, e-mail and other address fields confuse you even further – it would have been a lot easier if the most frequently used fields are highlighted in some way. We would choose this to be done with the Name, Picture, Mobile number and e-mail fields and thus finding them would have been easy, eliminating the need to go through the long list.

Personal photos and ringtones can be assigned to each contact; there’s no restriction on the dimensions of the pictures but they are visualized in very small size even on an incoming call – we think they are useless. You can also add a note to each contact.

Dialer:

You can dial a number, not listed in your phonebook by simply using the hardware or the virtual keyboard, which appears after you press the Answer button. Pressing the buttons you will start imputing the digits of a possible number, but at the same time you will search the phone book as if imputing a text by a predictive text input system. So, to call John you can press 5-6-4-6 and the matching contacts will be visualized in the list.

Organizer:

Alarms can be accessed through the home screen, by tapping on the clock icon. Three of them are available, and they can all be configured to be active for certain days of the week, assigning names and different sounds to each of them. All alarms can be active simultaneously, and overall they are easy to use and do what they are supposed to. We are rather disappointed that their number is limited to three, as it was in the previous version of the OS.

The next tab in this menu is the clock; there is a field called Visiting next to it, which can be used as a World Clock – select another location and the phone starts using its local time. The clock has an option to be displayed on the title bar of all the menus, which is handy.

The electronic calendar, where you can save your appointments, can be found in the HP Shortcuts menu. You can use options like: reminder (PRIOR NOTICE 1/5/10/15/30/45 minutes, 1/2/3/4/5/6 hour/day/week), recurrence (Once, Every (same-day-of-the-week), Day (same-date) of every month, Every (same 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/year/agenda 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 you can add to-do items. For a given Task you can set subject, priority (normal, low, and high), start/due date, reminder (to be notified if it’s due), category (business, holiday, personal, seasonal) and write a 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).

The Calculator is simple but its buttons are relatively big and can easily be pressed with your fingers. Features like scientific calculator and unit converter are still missing.

‘Notes’ are simple notes in which you can input text by the keyboard or by hand as an image. They can be synchronized with outlook.

Search is an application searching in all files in the phone. You can specify certain types of files (calendar/contacts/excel/messaging/notes/etc), but the best option is All Data, which will rummage everything in your phone.

File Explorer is the mobile alternative of Explorer in Windows environment with computers. We use it to view the phone memory, including the system folders of the device, which feels like working on a PC.

Messaging:

Different message types are placed in a single menu - SMS, MMS and e-mails. There is nothing unexpected here. Entering text is done by one of the following touch display methods:

• Block Recognizer
• Keyboard
• Letter Recognizer
• Transcriber
• XT9

We think that the on-screen keyboard is the fastest and most convenient way to do it, but if you train the other methods, they can also be quite handy! Combined with the T9 predictive system, entering text with the phone is pretty quick.

Something new added, by the manufacturer is the HP Voice Reply option. It allows you to send a voice reply to an e-mail received, by recording a sound file in .wav format. The file then is emailed as an attachment that the recipient can play to hear your response. The quality of the sound recorded is very good but, but the size of the file is quite big; 20 seconds are about 5 MB. For those of you who do not have an unlimited data plan, this would be a disaster. However, it still takes less time to record an answer than to write one.

Connectivity:

Nowadays, talking through the phone is not enough – Windows Mobile phones are pocket computers that are used for Internet, and as GPRS/EDGE are not fast enough, 3G modules are built-in. The sad thing is that like GSMs, 3G (UMTS/HSDPA) networks also use different bands on the different continents (2100 MHz for Europe and Asia and 850/1900 MHz for America/Australia, with 1700 MHz prepared for launch by T-Mobile) which means if the device is optimized for usage in one of the continents group won’t work in the other and vice verse. The HP iPAQ 614 is quad-band GSM and tri-band (850/1900/2100) UMTS/HSDPA, which allows it to be 3G used in both Europe/Asia and in the US, over the AT&T’s 3G network. The Support of HSDPA (7.2 MBps) allows for even faster than the UMTS data transfer. iPAQ 614 is usable in ANY GSM or UMTS network around the globe, but lacking 1700 MHz won’t work as 3G in T-Mobile US’ future network when it launches.

WiFi and Bluetooth come standard. Bluetooth is mainly used for connecting to other nearby devices, as accessories (earpieces, car-kits, multimedia devices) and for data transfer (transfer of files to/from another phone/PC). Cable connection can also be used, via the miniUSB port.

Like all other Windows phones, you need to have ActiveSync (Windows XP) or Windows Mobile Device Center (Windows Vista) installed on the computer to connect to it. The program will let you easily synchronize the phone (contacts, emails, and organizer) with Outlook.

With WiFi you can connect to a wireless LAN network covering you, use it as an Internet source and view the shared documents (input \\name-of-computer in Internet Explorer and you will see what is shared).

Internet:

Like in every WM6 phone, we have the mobile version of Internet Explorer present here. Unfortunately, the name is the only thing that relates it to the PC version. Large pages can be loaded, but it happens slowly. That’s where the agony begins: you have three options for visualization, One Column, Fit To Screen, Desktop. The first two deactivate horizontal and allow vertical scrolling and the last one tries to show the page as a PC. It performs ok and does the job. Navigation though, is not comfortable. You cannot zoom out or pan, for easier repositioning (like the iPhone), and if more text is present, be ready for constant scrolling in both directions, since there is no option to fit the text to the screen (as in S60).

Overall, the browser is usable, but uncomfortable and far behind the competition; we avoided using it, unless we really needed to do so. The light upgrade to version 6.1 doesn’t change things much and it’s time Microsoft equipped its business phones with something more competitive. A good example is iPhone’s Safari, the Symbian S60 phones and even some “not smartphones,” by manufacturers such as Sony Ericsson, Samsung.


However, since this is a PocketPC if you don’t like this internet browser, you can install another one. Unfortunately, at the moment there are no descent alternatives available. There are only a few perspective programs, which are expected to come out in the future, and at the moment only their beta versions are available: Opera Mobile 9.5, SkyFire, and even Microsoft’s own DeepFish.

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.

Performance:

We are very happy with the overall performance of iPAQ 614. According to the tests made with SPB Benchmark, the HP device falls behind the TyTN II, but in reality, that’s not so. The menus and applications open almost instantaneously, something we cannot say about the rivals of the iPAQ 614. Well, at times, there is some lag, but that happens rarely and for the moment, there is no WM6 device, which doesn’t experience the same problem. Apparently, the manufacturer has taken the OS optimization under serious consideration and combining it with the powerful hardware, has achieved an extremely good result.

Only the incoming sound quality was not impressive, because the voices heard were monotonous sharp and sometimes, even hard to understand. In contrast, in the opposite direction, everything is good and the manufacturer deserves praise. No matter how many additional functions a PocketPC has, it is still a phone and the sound quality during a call is a key element.

There is a Loudspeaker option, but when you activate it, the rear speaker is switched on, which is kind of strange and in order to hear what is being said, you have to turn the phone around and position it at about 6 inches from your ear. There is a lot of background noise as well, accompanied by annoying crackling sounds. Overall, you’ll be better off not using this function of the phone.

The HP iPAQ’s battery is 1590 mAh, almost the same as the Eten X800’s and slightly bigger than the one of the TyTN II. According to official data, it has a 4-hour talk-time and it can be in stand-by mode for 250 hours. These are quite real and good values for a Windows Mobile 6 Professional device.

Conclusion:

The new HP iPAQ 614 is a combines everything a businessperson needs. It is very fast, and since it offers a few navigation solutions, you are able to choose the one that fits you best. Unfortunately, its speakerphone is unusable and the sound quality during a talk is not the best, but it can be adjusted via an external wireless device.

If you are looking for a business oriented Windows Mobile 6 Professional phone, HP iPAQ 614 is the right choice.

Moreover, if you are not happy with what it offers, you have the HTC TyTN II or the Eten X800. They have their own pros and cons, but no phone is perfect. 614 is not perfect either, but it performed on a very high level.