Introduction, packaging
Probably most of you know the name of HP, but it’s almost nearly sure that this is not because of their smartphones. The reason for this is probably not the quality of their products, it’s just that the renowned manufacturer targets there products primarily at business users, so the ones that are available, are… well, how should I put it: sometimes a bit expensive.
Their product launches are nowadays rather random, last summer we had iPAQ 614c and 914c, while before that they had the predecessor of this phone, iPAQ 510 and the phone-less PDA. Their current handset is evidently one of the smartphone product line, so it’s called Voice Messenger - just like that, without any number, which is interesting because the 510 series had the same name. Let’s not think about why HP is the only one of the large manufacturers that still develops phones for the Windows Mobile for Smartphone that is evidently marked for extinction by Microsoft, and anyway, with the launch of Windows Mobile 7 this platform will completely disappear.
The handset, provided by SpeedShop for testing, came in the usual large box. Besides the handset we also get a headset, a data cable and a charger with a replaceable connector, which has no wire, so we also need to use the data cable for charging.
Exterior
Ladies and Gentlemen I can undoubtedly declare that the new Voice Messenger is just beautiful. As for its size, it’s a simple smartphone, it’s 114 x 50 x 13.6 mm large and it weighs 107 grams. The materials used look much better than they are in fact, but this doesn’t affect the attractive design: this HP shines on all sides, it looks simply splendid in sunlight, which colors it blue or silver. We might think that its made of metal with a lacquer finish, but unfortunately this is not true, as Voice Messenger is made of medium quality, fragile-looking plastics. Some might call this “cheap-looking”, but I still think that it’s cool!
On top of the front side there is an HP logo covering the speaker, on it’s left we ca see the status LED. Just a bit below there is the 2.4” QVGA display, which is of course not a touchscreen, due to the operating system’s limitations. Below this there are two touchkeys with the home and back keys under them and the call accept/deny keys are placed on the sides – the last four are not touchkeys, but classical ones. In the center there is a strange thing, which is to replace the d-pad: it can be pressed and follows our finger’s motion. Basically it’s easy to use, as it’s a bit sunk, so it’s much harder to “overscroll”. On the bottom there is the keypad for data entry, which is neither numeric nor QWERTY, we can see two letters on a button, typing is rather easy as the keys are large enough and their pressure point is also fine. The backlight is near-useless, we only get some light in the top row, below that there is just faint sign leading us to the location of the keys.
We can use the back to take a look at us before an important meeting, it’s pretty much like a mirror. It’s another thing if it resists scratches, as the part that can be taken off is an extremely thin piece of plastic, which isn’t even firmly fastened to the case, it wobbles and has a play of about a millimeter. Besides these, there isn’t much interesting left on the back side, we can only see the camera, its flash and the handsfree speaker.
On the top there is only the mute slider, which can be used only with our nail, it’s a bit hard to push it. On the right there is the 2.5 mm jack, the standard microUSB connector and the camera’s shutter button. On the left there is the keypad lock, the volume control keys and the voice commander’s hotkey.
Hardware, operating system, software
The handset has the Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard operating system, so I’d like to emphasize it again that Voice Messenger has no touchscreen. It’s CPU is still rather powerful, as the proper speed is provided by a 528 MHz Qualcomm MSM7201 chip, and we have 128 MB of RAM and 256 MB of ROM, 73 megs being available for running programs and 78 megabytes for storing data.
The Today screen is fortunately not the default one, it has a great HP plugin, which lets us access the most important functions in a second. This is in fact a vertically scrolling, nicely animated list, on the top we can see the current time (and launch the alarm clock), while below this we can observe missed events, which are followed by meeting reminders, the getting started tab, the music player, the image viewer and the profile manager. Unfortunately the task manager can be accessed only by going through two submenus – running applications won’t be shut down after pressing the red X key, this is a “feature” of the operating system. If we don’t pay attention we can fill up the memory in a couple of hours which leads to slowdowns and general instability.
In the menu we can see mostly default applications, although there are some exceptions, on the first view we can access Google Maps and Google Search, but in the Accessories menu we have a PDF reader, a wireless printing app, Java runtime environment and a voice commander. The Office Mobile suite is made up of four programs: Excel, OneNote, Word and Power Point - this last one can of course be used only for viewing and playing back presentations, not for making them.
Phone calls, data transfer
During phone calls I had no problems at all, sound quality has been rather good, and the volume was fine as well. As I have already mentioned we have voice dialing, the operating system features speed dialing as well.
All applications related to phone calls are the default one, with the exception of Voice Commander, which can be used for voice dialing as well. Messaging and the contact list are handled by the well-known Outlook, which does a great job, as we can store contacts until there is free memory and we can send and receive all kinds of messages – this of course covers the SMS/MMS/e-mail trio. It’s important to note that the email client supports attachments and authenticated IMAP servers as well.
As for data transfer, the handset has a large set of supported protocols: the GSM module is quad-band (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), while for data transfer we can use GPRS, EDGE, UMTS and HSDPA as well. This is quite great, but since Voice Messenger is a business handset, it also has WiFi and Bluetooth as well, this latter one finally being version 2.0, so it supports stereo sound transfer. According to the specs sheet the handset has a GPS receiver too, which is even A-GPS compatible – by default this feature can be used only for locating our position on Google Maps.
Multimedia
The camera has a resolution of 3.2 megapixels, has autofocus and a LED flash to help it function in poor lighting conditions. The highest available resolution is 2048 x 1536 pixels, focusing is very fast, but the photo software doesn’t have very much settings, as besides resolution, JPEG compression, white balance, and luminance/saturation/sharpness we can’t set anything else – but we can turn off camera sounds. As a positive aspect we can record videos in VGA (640 x 480) resolution, although we have no information about the speed.
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Image quality is surprisingly good, at least I would have expected much less, based on the lens size. Noise level is moderate, edge sharpness is surprisingly good, but these are accompanied by some chromatic aberration and faint colors. As for video recording something’s fishy over here as well, the movie lags, but it might be that my computer didn’t handle this astonishingly huge resolution. A test video can be found here (3GP format, 1.43 MB).
Music playback: basic. This means Windows Media Player and all of its “advanced” features, so we have no equalizer, album covers are displayed only sometimes, but at least it can run in the background and it can filter tracks by ID3 tags. The little HP didn’t perform very well on the handsfree, but the headset is about the medium level.\
Battery, summary
The battery’s capacity is 1260 mAh, which is enough for keeping the HP alive for two days. This is an average performance in this category.
As for the summary, let’s start with the price. The new HP iPAQ Voice Messenger currently costs about 335 euros, it has dropped from 370. For this we get a handset assembled from not very high-quality materials, but that in turn looks great, which has such an operating system that is known to have no successor, which also means the end of software support and applications developed for the platform. The hardware part is okay, but for God’s sake, new HTC Touch Diamond or a Nokia E71 is cheaper, or Touch 3G is just a bit more expensive if we want a brand new handset at all costs. It would be a great deal for about 200 euros, but at this price it doesn’t even deserve an award. HP-price.
Bocha
Translated by Szaszati
The handset has bee provided by www.speedshop.hu, thanks. Please, click here to access the shop.
Specifications
| HP iPAQ Voice Messenger | ||
 | Technology | GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 MHz UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA 900/1900/2100 MHz |
| Operating system | Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard | |
| Size | 114 x 50 x 13.6 mm | |
| Weight | 107 grams | |
| CPU | 528 MHz Qualcomm MSM7201 | |
| ROM / RAM | 256 / 128 MB | |
| Display | 2.4” diagonal, 240 x 320 pixels resolution, 16 bit color depth TFT | |
| Expandability | microSD (SDHC-compatible) | |
| WiFi | 802.11b/g | |
| Infra / Bluetooth | none / 2.0 | |
| GPS receiver | yes (A-GPS too) | |
| Audio | 2.5 mm jack, microphone, mono speaker | |
| Camera | 3.2 megapixels, autofocus, LED flash | |
| Battery | 1260 mAh, changeable | |
| Other | - | |
