The best Palm PDA on the market
Written: Sep 30 '01 (Updated Oct 06 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Screen, Collapsible Graffiti, LOUD speaker, Dual expansion, Good form factor
Cons: It's not color, Some applications incompatible with new screen, Serial Sync Cradle
The Bottom Line: Although not color, the Handera is packed with features to make anyone drool. With excellent expansion options the Handera is a very practical and useful PDA.
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| freegoo's Full Review: HandEra 330 |
When I first started looking for a replacement for my Prism I initially discounted the Handera 330 because I couldn't see myself using a monochrome screen again. So I would look at the Sony then the Palm, but the Handera's features kept me coming back to look; if only it were color.
The screen
If there is anything to love/hate about the Handera 330 this is it. Having used the Prism for six months I had really gotten used to the bright color screen. It was surprising just how often I used that sucker as a flashlight. The Handera's screen isn't going to blow anyone away when you first show it to them, until you show them the extra features.
The Handera uses a new higher than normal resolution it calls QVGA. Standard Palms use a blocky 160X160 screen resolution with a static silk screen along the bottom, which is used to enter text into the unit. The Handera does away with the static silk screen and uses a higher resolution of 240X320. Programs written to take advantage of the Handera are blessed with a sharper looking screen, clean fonts, and more screen real estate. If the application takes advantage of Handera's API, it is possible to run applications in "Landscape Mode" holding the Palm on it's side. This is especially handy with spreadsheets since you can now see far more fields on the screen. E-Books would be another excellent benefactor of this.
The Handera is the only Palm unit with collapsible graffiti. With the click of a button, the graffiti area minimizes down to the bottom of the screen freeing up the whole screen for the Palm application. This is great for EBooks, spreadsheets, and Wordsmith, but is also quite nice for use in general. Since the graffiti is part of the screen, it is also lit up when the backlight is turned on. The only other Palm device that lights up the graffiti area is the Palm 500 series.
Since the Graffiti area is part of the screen, even more enhancements are possible. First all graffiti strokes are echoed on the screen as you write. This has made my graffiti about twice as efficient as before. Download a couple hacks and you can fit the on screen keyboard into the graffiti area or put up a clock and date to be seen whenever the Handera is on.
As with most emerging standards, this higher resolution screen is not perfect. There are not as many applications out there that take advantage of the hi-resolution screen as I would like, but the standard is still young and already many software firms have begun adding support for Handera's new screen. For applications that are not high resolution you still have two more options:
1. Scale to fit. This is the default mode for Palm Applications. Using various techniques (including font substitution to remove the jaggedness of text being "stretched") the application is scaled out to a 240X240 resolution screen. When in this mode, minimizing the graffiti area does you no good as the program remains fixated in the top portion of the screen. As a rule, most applications run pretty good in this mode. Text and standard Palm controls are converted extremely well. Where you may run into problems is if the program makes use of bitmaps that don't scale well, or if the program writes directly to the screen instead of using the Palm OS (as they should). I have found that 90% of the programs I used before work flawlessly in this mode, and perform at least as well as on a standard Palm. Bejeweled is the only program that refuses to run in this mode on my Palm. Games as a whole tend to have problems since they make heavy use of bitmaps.
2. Compatibility mode. This is made up of two categories in the Application preferences menu: "Upper Left" and "Center". As you might guess, this mode makes a box of 160X160 resolution in either the center of the screen or upper left corner and runs the program in this new "virtual screen". Programs run as they normally would on a standard Palm. I haven't found any Palm programs that won't work in this mode. Personally I find this mode to be unusable. Text is very small and hard to read in my opinion. Everything is clear, but is very small and screen space is wasted. Thankfully I haven't had any programs that I routinely use be forced into this category. You would be well advised to check with software companies prior to purchasing the Handera 330 to see if any of your essential applications are not supported.
Hacks are an entirely different situation. Most DO work, but some that make extensive use of the silkscreen area are incompatible. I don't make extensive use of hacks myself, so I am unable to provide you with a list of incompatible hacks. Again, I would recommend checking with the author of the program of any hacks you have questions about prior to purchasing the Handera.
One final thing worth mentioning is the backlight. Handera has wisely chosen to go back to the original Palm backlight (think Indiglo). Although it won't work as a flashlight, it make the Handera visible in low light all the way down to no light.
Expansion
Although this used to be a sore spot with Palm's that is quickly changing. The Sony allows you to add Ram through memory sticks, the Palm has the SD card slot, and Handspring has their springboard slot. While those all may be nice, the Handera raises the bar and offers dual expansion with both a SD card slot and a Compact flash slot. This is nice since before you had to choose between adding a I/O card or memory. With the Handera it's quite possible to use 64 megs expanded memory, internal modem, and
the Stowaway keyboard at the same time. Since Handera stuck with the old Palm III form factor there are also a ton of Palm III cases and expansion products available for the Handera.
It's a well known fact that Palm's Virtual File Support is lousy. Out of the box, all you can do with the memory stick is copy and move data to and from the card. It is possible for Applications to read databases off of the card, and even run off of the card, but very few are. Thankfully Handera has a work around available off of their website, but it is beta and unadvertised. It's a program called AutoCard. AutoCard allows you to run any program off of either a SD or compact flash card. I've used it with a 32 meg card and it works rather well.
The form factor
Here is another feature a lot of people tend to dislike. The front of the Handera is a chrome covering. Flip the back over and you have black plastic. If you have seen a Palm III then you know the approximate size dimensions. The stylus attaches in the back, and my experience is kind of hard to remove. It's not as sexy as the Palm 505, but it's not as ugly as the website seems to make it either (in my opinion).
Coming from the Prism I found the Handera to be much lighter and a little bit thinner. It easily fits in my right pants pocket and is unnoticeable. Although I thought the Handera looked big and clunky in all the screenshots I saw on the web, when I pulled it out of the box it looks pretty nice.
The speaker
I had given up on using my Visor for alarms and reminders simply because if you had a case on the Visor and put it in your pocket you could not possibly hear the alarm - even if you were in a quiet room and were listening for it. Handspring's answer is a $80 springboard that adds an "ok" speaker. But guess what, alarms still go through the Prism's cheap speaker. Talk about value.
Handera changes all of this. Located under the memo and to do buttons is the loudest speaker I have seen on any handheld platform. It is capable of playing midi files and waves recorded with the voice recorder included with the Handera. The past 2 weeks I have used the Handera as an alarm clock (using a shareware program called clock+) and it easily wakes up my grumpy self. Volume control can be adjusted by pressing the little speaker in the graffiti area.
Miscellaneous
The Handera comes with the standard Palm applications (modified to take advantage of the higher screen resolution), and a special Handera version of Quick Office. A backup program and card-aware file manager are also included. As previously mentioned, the hotsync cradle is serial so hot sycs are rather slow. This is done for backwards compatibility, but is still a sore point for people like me that only have one serial port. A serial to USB cable is available from Palm for $30, but I have yet to get it to work on my system. Seems rather expensive for such a short cord as well.
Located on the Left side of the Handera is a jog wheel and Auxiliary button. One handed operation with the Handera is possible, though slower than if you use the stylus. Holding the auxiliary button down allows you to make a voice memo.
Since the Handera is a monochrome device you can expect long battery life. The Handera uses 4 AAA batteries and has an optional lithium rechargeable battery available on their website. This solves the problem many people had with their rechargeable color units of being shackled to their charging cradle. Should your Handera's rechargeable battery go dead while you are traveling you could simply slip in some AAA batteries.
The big wrap up
Although I dearly miss the color screen, the Handera is a fantastic device that I haven't regretted purchasing for a second.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 300
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Epinions.com ID:
freegoo
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Reviews written: 6
Trusted by: 1 member
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