userleif's Full Review: Hewlett Packard iPAQ h1935 Pocket PC
Overview
The Ipaq 1935 is a small light PDA with a beautiful screen that can be used amongst other things as an organiser, an MP3 player, a database, a word processor and a note taker.
Styling & Design
In short, superb. It is not much bigger than a minidisc player, is thin, and hardly much bigger than the screen. The casing is a silver plastic that seems to be painted and has a classy look and feel. The shape is comfortable in the hand. For my part the design is what sold the device: it just looks and feels good.
Build quality
The build is excellent with a quality feel. The machine will flex slightly if pressure is applied but the overall impression is that it will stand up to anything but abuse.
Hardware
The machine is powered by a 203MHz Samsung processor. As far as I can tell this is an ARM clone since my machine will run applications intended for ARM powered devices. In any case, it seems to be more than adequate. (It is worth noting that CPU speed is not on its own a good benchmark of machine speed. The actual performance depends not only on the CPU speed, but on other components esp. the graphics hardware. From published tests that I have seen Ipaqs often outperform machines with faster CPUs. )
There is 16MB Flash ROM and 64MB SDRAM of which 56MB is accessible to the user. In my opinion this is ample RAM since you can easily buy an expansion card. In any case, for security I prefer to keep important files on a non-volatile SD card. Files in SDRAM could of course be lost were the device to power down or hard reset.
There is one SDIO card slot for memory and expansion cards. it accepts Secure Digital memory cards, MMC memory cards and SDIO expansion cards such as Bluetooth and wifi. Incidentally, if you want Bluetooth, I recommend you buy the Ipaq 1945 which has Bluetooth built-in. At present there are not as many SDIO expansion cards as CF ones. However, SD cards are small which makes them increasingly popular for PDAs, digital cameras and other consumer electronic devices. I am sure we will see a lot more SDIO expansion cards over the next year or two.
The screen is a 3.5" transflective TFT LCD with 240 x 320 pixels that provides 64,000 colors and images that are sharp, bright and contrasty. I happily use mine at the 50% brightness setting to conserve power when disconnected from the mains. The screen is at the time of writing (November 2003) probably as good as you can get.
There is support for stereo sound output via a built-in loud speaker and a 2.5mm speaker jack. Quite why HP chose to use a 2.5mm jack is beyond me, though to HPs credit machines in the UK are supplied with an adapter. I am told that in the US an adaptor can be purchased from Radio Shack. Sound quality is excellent and in most cases will probably be limited by the quality of the owners headphones. The sound quality through headphones is not quite on a par with my expensive hi-fi, but it is surprisingly close. The built-in loud speaker is as expected rather tinny, but quite serviceable for playing wake up alarms and reminders.
There is a microphone and a small button on the side that can be used to start the built-in voice recorder.
Next to the voice recorder button is a small infra red device that can be used to beam information to and from other similarly enabled machines.
There are the usual four buttons and a navigator button on the front of the machine beneath the screen. They are easy to use and work well, though I prefer to use the touch screen to navigate.
The base of the machine has a socket for a combined power and synchronisation cable. The unit connects to the PC via a USB socket. The machine recharges the main battery when connected to the external power supply.
Unusually the machine has a removeable re-chargeable battery so if you wish you can carry a spare and swap batteries while on the move. To help you do this the machine has a small internal back up battery that ensures that data is preserved even with the main battery removed. However, this back up battery is not intended to power the machine while in use. Battery life is reasonable and can be extended signficantly by reducing the screen brightness. If you are using the machine as an MP3 player, then battery life can be significantly improved by ensuring that the screen automatically turns itself off after a set period of user inactivity e.g. 2 minutes.
The machine has a metal and plastic stylus that is stored in a slot in the top of the machine. It is well made and feels comfortable in the hand. However, as noted elsewhere, it should be replaced as it can damage the screen.
Software
The machine is adequately but not over equipped with software. Microsoft® Windows® Mobile 2003 Professional software for Pocket PC is ready installed. This includes Word, Excel, an excellent PDA, Windows Media Player for playing MP3 and video files and a voice recorder application.
HP provide on CD a nice image viewing application that you can install into the machine's SDRAM.
Microsoft Activesync is included allowing the user to install programs and copy files from a PC. It also supports full and incremental backups - an essential feature - and synchronisation between the PDA and Microsoft Outlook on the owners PC.
HP credit each UK customer with 5 points that they can use to obtain further software for free from their web site. (I assume the same applies in the US.) I downloaded a small utility called Pocket Plus that corrects some of the oddities/bugs in the Microsoft Pocket PC OS. This utility is considered by many Pocket PC review sites to be in the top of its class. I also downloaded a better MP3 player application called Pocket Music. This improves on Windows Media Player by the addition of a graphic equaliser that compensates for the poor base response of compact head phones. You can also choose a decent chess program, a good English dictionary and many other surprisingly good items of software.
Hand writing recognition is built in to the Pocket PC OS. It is readily configured to recognise cursive (joined up) writing, or single characters. I was surprised at how good the single character recognition is. It works well and allowed fairly rapid text entry, perhaps not quite as fast as writing in a notebook, but not far off. If you want a data entry device then this PDA will do the job.
Incidentally, there is a lot of free software out there. I found a chess game, an English dictionary, an English to French dictionary, and a French to English dictionary. The last three were downloaded from the Microsoft web site.
Weaknesses
The stylus supplied with my machine seriously scratched the screen after a mere two weeks and might have ruined it given long term use. (I used Novus plastic polish to remove the scratches.) I might be that I was supplied with a damaged stylus, or perhaps the wrong one. In any case I recommend that you try the supplied stylus and if it causes scratches, replace it with one that has a softer tip. Note that you should view the screen at various angles when looking for scratches. They can be hard to see until it is too late. I also recommend that you get some screen protectors, and put one on ASAP - why take the risk of damaging the screen when a protector costs next to nothing?
HP do not supply a case which in my opinion is an essential item. I purchased a leather Piel Frama case which looks good, is made from good quality leather and is well made. (Note that mine had a couple of minor cosmetic manufacturing faults. Nothing major, but irritating given the high price.) Vaja cases are also highly regarded.
Summary
This is a very stylish compact and well built PDA. It has a decent set of built in programs, an excellent screen, an SDIO slot and good performance. If you don't need built in wifi or Bluetooth, and you don't have a pile of Compact Flash cards that you want to use, then I strongly recommend you at least take a look at this machine.
Notes added 22 January 2004
I have made it clear in the above text that the main battery is rechargeable.
Regarding battery life, I use mine to listen to music at work, and find that one charge lasts the day, so I must get more than 5 hours continuous music play. The screen is the main drain on the battery, and as expected battery life is significantly less with the screen on at maximum brightness. I haven't tested it, but I think it would drop to 2.5 hours or less.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 200 Recommended for: Business Executives - Powerful and Professional
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