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Fewer than 24 hours have passed since we wrote about HP's iPaq Mobile Messenger smart phone - and already pictures and a tentative model number of the machine have leaked out.
Website iPaqAbilities has the shots of the hw6500, along with some further details of the specification. As we reported yesterday, the HP device will feature GSM/GPRS with EDGE mobile phone connectivity, plus Bluetooth and GPS satellite positioning, but not Wi-Fi as we mistakenly assumed.
To that we can add the presence of both Mini SD and SD IO slot, a 1200mAh battery like Compaq Presario V2000 battery (compaq v2000 battery ), Hp pavillion zx5000 battery (Hp zx5000 battery ), Hp Pavilion dv2000 battery (Hp dv2000 battery ), Hp Pavilion dv2600 battery (Hp dv2600 battery ), Hp Pavilion dv2700 battery (Hp dv2700 battery ), and the inclusion, on the rear of the device, of a 1.3 megapixel digicam. The unit will be powered by a 520MHz processor, almost certainly an Intel XScale PXA270, we say. It will run Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition.
The screen remains the biggest point of interest on the web today. It's certainly square, and calculated by Engadget to be 3.2in in size. Separately, MobileTechReview notes that the display is a 240 x 240 job, so not quite up to the Treo 650's 320 x 320 unit. The iPaq's size is reckoned to be 11.9 x 7.2 x 1.9-2.3cm, making it much the same size as the new PalmOne smart phone but wider - which will make it less comfortable to use as a handset, if that's the case. But there's no antenna stub and no fold-out receiver for the GPS system, either.
As for the more usual Pocket PC side of things, all of the Windows Mobile usual fare is here and accessible, as already noted, from the Start button. Notably absent, as it is not part of Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition by default, is Microsoft Reader. It isn't stretching the imagination too far to expect that a multimedia user might want to read the odd ebook, so I'd have liked to see a reader on ROM, though not necessarily Microsoft's own.
Most of this review has been about software, but then apart from the generous 152MB of memory, the Wi-Fi for media streaming, and the Bluetooth, it's the software that will sell the iPaq rx3715. For the record though, there is an SD card slot in the top of the casing which supports SDIO so you can add peripherals as well as more memory, while a button on the left side of the casing where you might more usually find a jog wheel activates the camera. The four buttons which more normally activate key Windows Mobile Applications are, this time around, dedicated to the Mobile Media control area, the HP Image Zone viewer, Nevo's infrared remote control tool and the iTask application switcher.
You get a docking cradle which is rather nicely styled and coloured slate grey like the hardware, and a dongle which allows you to charge the iPaq rx3715 without the cradle. There's a carry case too, which is a nice touch for a device HP clearly expects to be toted frequently by its owners.
For all its megapixels don't expect the built-in camera to replace a good dedicated digital camera. Cameras are still far and away better than anything you'll find in a phone or PDA. The media streaming is nice, and it works, but I stream audio to my old Mio 558 over Wi-Fi so it's hardly a special feature. Nevo's TV remote control? I could buy one of a number of applications to provide this feature.
I couldn't close without a word on battery life. Rather than invent a fancy new fangled media streaming test, I ran the test I always run for Pocket PCs - simple looping of MP3 music until the battery gives out. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth were turned off, the screen set always on and at half brightness, speaker volume as high as possible and beam receive was off. A low battery warning came through after four hours 22 minutes, music continued for six hours 25 minutes and when music playback stopped so did the machine. This is a pretty good result and I conclude that HP has put some effort into getting the battery to perform well.