Mobile Phone Reviews! > HTC Touch Pro Competition - Thread for Exotic Phone Reviews!

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Just let us know, and 90% of handsets we can stick straight in. However, the few that our database cannot handle had no place to live...

So...we've put this thread together so you can review any phone you like and stick them right here!

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Hp iPAQ H6340

When the H6340 was released way back in 2004, it was a remarkable machine. Ground-breaking even, paving the way for the current generation of interactive touchscreen multifunction multimedia communications devices. The mobile phone is more than it used to be, so much so that calling them phones is a bit like calling your PC just a word-processor. I told my colleagues and friends that it was the future, that soon loads of people would have things like this – they may have thought I was mad then, but now…

I bought my H6340 in early 2005, and still use it as my main phone now. It has many problems, but it has had some rough treatment and still serves me well after almost 4 years.

The specs:

Texas Instruments OMAP 1510, 168Mhz processor
64MB RAM (55MB available to user)
64MB ROM (20MB available as non-volatile storage)
3.5” 320x240 touchscreen display (65k colours)

Quad-band GSM with GPRS
Bluetooth 1.1
Wi-Fi (802.11b)
IR port

Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC

SD/MMC slot

1800 mAh battery

75x119x19mm
190g, including battery

Supplied accessories:

Mono ear-piece with mic for hands-free
Adaptor for mini-jack headsets
Charger/Sync cradle (will charge phone and a spare battery)
Leather case
Mini detachable keyboard.

So What’s it like?

When I first took the phone out of the box, I was impressed. It looked good, with a nice big, clear, responsive colour touch-screen. A sign of things to come, however, appeared after 10 minutes of use – the first thing I had to look up in the manual was where the reset button was. My phone had crashed. Poke the stylus into the little hole in the side and you’re back up and running within 30 seconds. This is what is called a soft reset. A hard reset, which can be brought on by a crash means the loss of all your data, installed applications etc. I quickly learnt why they had included 20MB of non-volatile flash memory and the brilliant HP iPAQ Backup software. It takes 2 minutes to back up, and everything can be restored in case of memory loss or corruption. The phone has only hard reset itself a few times since I’ve had it, although regular soft resets are a necessity. It is possible to schedule regular backups.

In general the H6340 is quite buggy, and suffers from some major design flaws. Out of the box, by default, any button turns the device on. On the front are buttons to make and end calls, pull up contacts and your inbox, as well as a 5-way D-pad. All these buttons protrude from the surface, they are not recessed. Stick the phone, then, into the supplied leather case, and it will turn itself on and dial your mother-in-law just as you are commenting on the girl-in-the-mail-room’s lovely legs. You can set the buttons to not work when the screen is off in the settings, but if the phone rings, the touch-screen is activated (as well as the buttons) meaning the call has probably been answered and hung up by the time you’ve got it out of the case. I have got around these issues by buying a sturdy aluminium case, which also provides much better protection for the screen.

What separated this phone from the pack was connectivity. I bought this phone shortly before embarking on a year-long trip around the world and it easily justified its £400 price tag in that year. I was able to check train timetables, book flights and hotel rooms and email the folks at home, from almost anywhere, anytime. This was the first device to incorporate GSM/GPRS, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi in one.

The battery life is good – it’ll go for a week with the phone on standby, although using Wi-Fi drains the battery pretty fast. It’ll last me at least 3 full length movies, with the screen quite bright, or give me all day GPS navigation connected to a Bluetooth GPS receiver.

GSM/GPRS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are all simple to operate with the HP Wireless Manager software, although Wi-Fi refuses to connect using WPA-PSK and TKIP despite it being listed as an option. The GSM radio sometimes seems to lose the signal and will refuse to make calls or send texts until I disconnect and reconnect. Occasionally, when the phone rings, it will hang for a few seconds – inevitably resulting in a missed call. Wi-Fi is only b, Bluetooth only 1.1 and GPRS is, well, GPRS – so not particularly quick. It also only connects to a PC via ActiveSync with USB 1.1 or Bluetooth, so I use a card reader to transfer large files.

One of my annoyances with this device is the way it handles SD cards. With a PDA, when you turn it off you are basically just switching off the screen, any programs you had open are still running, it hasn’t shut down. The H6340 drops the connection with the SD card when I switch it off, which is bad. It takes a few seconds for it to see the card again when I switch it back on, so if I had any apps running from, or using files from, the storage card, there’s a good chance it’s going to crash.

So, despite its problems, why do I still use my clunky, crashy iPAQ as my phone? Partly because it’s cool – I get it out of my pocket and people say, “What is that!?” (although these days I think that might be because it looks like a great big silver brick!). It plays DivX movies perfectly and has a decent sized screen. It tunes my guitar. It still allows me to get online almost anywhere (albeit slowly). I can play Worms, Scrabble, Backgammon and Yahtzee on it. I can even play Doom, Quake and Tomb Raider, if I’ve the patience for an awkward touch-screen and D-pad interface. If I really wanted to I could boot Linux on it. The IR port lets me use it as a remote control with a very decent 15ft range. I used to have a Peugeot 306 - I could operate the central locking with it!

Honestly though, the truth is I just can’t afford to buy the shiny new HTC number that I would like to replace it with!

I currently own a HTC Mogul (Sprint). This one has a bunch of different names depending on service provider and they don't all bear the "HTC" logo. I think a general model i've seen for this is the PPC-6800. For you UK folk it's similar to the TyTN To start here are the specifications:

Operating System
Windows Mobile 6 Professional

Applications
Microsoft Office Word Mobile, Office Excel® Mobile, Office PowerPoint® Mobile, Office Outlook® Mobile, Internet Explorer Mobile, Windows Media Player 10 Mobile, ActiveSync, Pocket MSN®, PDF Viewer

Processor
QUALCOMM® MSM7500, 400MHz

Internal Memory
256 MB ROM, 64 MB RAM

Display
Large, crisp 2.8" touch screen with 64k colors (16bit) support (QVGA - 240 x 320 pixels) with LED backlight

Technology
Dual-band, CDMA2000 1X/EV-DO
Rev A upgradeable, E911 compliant

Wi-Fi Built-in Wi-Fi with compliant IEEE 802.11b/g

E-mail

ActiveSync with Office Outlook Mobile, Direct Push, POP3/IMAP

Dimensions
4.3"(h) x 2.3"(w) x 0.7"(d)

Weight
5.8 oz.

Battery
Rechargeable Li-ion

Speakerphone Built-in speakerphone

Built-in Camera 2.0-megapixel camera with flash, auto-focus and camcorder

Video H.263 and MPEG-4 support

I/O Interface Bluetooth 2.0 with stereo support, IrDA, 11-pin mini-USB port

Expansion microSD memory card slot
Antenna Internal antenna with external antenna connector
In-Box Content AC phone charger, USB sync cable, two mini USB adapter, 2.5mm headset adapter, stereo headset w/mic, battery, 512MB microSD memory card, getting started packet, software installation CD, leather carry pouch, two styli
Optional Accessories Stereo Bluetooth headset, car charger

This is the phone that finally made me break down and buy a PDA phone...I've never regretted it. I have always done alot of business on my cell phones, but until I saw this phone I just coudln't justify spending 300-400 dollars on a PDA phone. Some of the biggest reasons for me has been the overall phone size, the screen size, and the keyboard. I'm sure everybody remembers the old Blackberries. It was like holding a piece of toast to your ear...definitely not a sexy look. While Blackberries have certainly gotten sleeker over time this phone is equally sleek. It may not be quite as thin as the Blackberry Curve, but the screen is bigger and the phone in general feels good in your hand. It doesn't feel cheap, flimsy, or otherwise likely to break. The slide out keyboard on this phone is fantastic and as large as you're likely to ever see on a resonably sized PDA phone. The sliding mechanism is easy to operate and yet it never feels like the phone is going to break. The only keyboard i've ever seen that compares is on the Sidekick and that phone is just too big for my tastes...even the new Sidekick 3 is just too long (not to mention for a newer phone it only has a 1.3 megapixel camera!!). And lastly with the large 2.8" screen and ability to switch orientations this phone is very capable of viewing videos and movies.

With updates the phone supports MicroSDHC cards which are available in up to 8gb sizes. I have one card full of games, one card full of MP3s, and the included 512MB full of various applications. In flight mode the phone is a fully functioning handheld gaming system or MP3 player. Thanks to Windows Mobile 6.1 this phone is able to handle the plethora of free software people have made for windows mobile. I'm personally partial to the various NES/SNES emulators and roms i've been able to play while on long flights. The camera on this phone is very impressive. Even with newer phones boasting 3 megapixel cameras this phone's 2 megapixel camera boasts several real camera features. For example it has a panorama mode that allows you to string together several photos to make one long shot or even take a near 360 degree contiguous photo of a small room.

The phone of course like any is not without it's drawbacks, however none of them seem to be hardware based. The only issues i've encountered while using this phone are as a result of the Windows operating system. By default when you "close" a program it simply minimizes which causes the precious limited resources to be used up. You must actually go into the built in task manager to proper close and terminate programs. Fortunately there is a setting that tells programs to terminate completely when you click the X. Also the phone sometimes seems to have a resource hog sometimes even if no programs are open. However despite any memory issues I have encountered which are common in Windows operating systems across the board...I have not found any with this phone that aren't fixed by simply powering the phone off/on or pressing the soft reset button on the bottom of the phone. The telescopic stylus is well designed and sturdy, but over time i've found that they are prone to come out fairly easily. Luckily the phone comes with a spare stylus and you can purchase a 3 pack of OEM styli for only about 15 or 20 dollars.

I'm certainly an HTC fan now and am looking forward to getting my hands on a new HTC Touch Pro! Hope this was informative for everyone!