REVIEW: HP iPAQ 614C Business Navigator

Introduction HP have a long history of manufacturing PDAs, for the most part concentrating on the pure PDA sector. Recent times have seen HP move into the converged device market with a focus on Windows Mobile as an operating system. The HP iPAQ 614C is just such a converged device. What does this latest offering bring to the table, read on to find out...

For your delectation some photographs are thumbnails which may be clicked on to load a larger image.
Thanks go out to our very good friends at Clove Technology once again for providing us with a review sample.
For more information on the HP iPAQ 614C at Clove go to the Clove website

Extra special thanks goes out to PocketPCSoft.net for providing assistance in allowing us to use the 614C review photographs from their site after a technical hitch left us with a corrupted USB Memory Stick. Once again, the moral of the story, make sure you backup... And then backup your backup!!

Fast Facts
Operating system installed	Windows MobileÆ 6 Professional
Processor type	Marvell PXA270 Processor
Processor speed	520 MHz
Display type	TFT
Display size	2.8"
Video resolutions description	320 x 240, 65K colours, 16-bit
Keyboard	Integrated 12-button numeric keypad with Smart Touch Wheel function
Standard memory	128 MB SDRAM main memory for running applications, 256 MB flash ROM
Wireless technologies	Integrated WLAN 802.11b/g with WPA2 security, BluetoothÆ 2.0 with EDR
Mobile phone	Integrated Quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE phone and Tri band HSDPA 3.6/7.2 Mpbs
GPS receiver	Integrated GPS navigation (Assisted GPS)
Integrated camera	Integrated 3.0 Megapixel autofocus camera, 4X digital zoom, 640 x 480 VGA resolution, 1280 x 1024 SXGA resolution
Software included	HP iPAQ Mobile Broadband Connect, HP VoiceReply, Voice Commander, MMS Composer, BluetoothÆ Manager, Certificate Enroller, HP Photosmart Mobile, HP Help and Support, HP QuickStart Tour, HP Enterprise Mobility Agent
Portability
Display type	TFT
Display size	2.8"
Video resolutions description	320 x 240, 65K colours, 16-bit
Weight	145g
Dimensions (W x D x H)	6.03 x 1.75 x 11.7 cm
Performance
Processor type	Marvell PXA270 Processor
Processor speed	520 MHz
Standard memory	128 MB SDRAM main memory for running applications, 256 MB flash ROM
Keyboard	Integrated 12-button numeric keypad with Smart Touch Wheel function
Pointing device	Touch-sensitive display for stylus or fingertip
Power features	Battery: removable/rechargeable 1590 mAh Lithium-Polymer (user changeable), Talk time: up to 4 hours, Standby time: up to 10 days (250 hours)
Connectivity / GPS
Mobile phone	Integrated Quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE phone and Tri band HSDPA 3.6/7.2 Mpbs
Messaging services	Phone Dialer application, SMS support, MMS composer, Microsoft Outlook Push eMail, Pull eMail via ActiveSync, HP Voice Reply, Predictive Text tool, Microsoft Live Messenger
Wireless technologies	Integrated WLAN 802.11b/g with WPA2 security, BluetoothÆ 2.0 with EDR
GPS receiver	Integrated GPS navigation (Assisted GPS)
GPS softwares and maps	Google Maps mobile (for Turn-by-Turn Navigation, optional HP GPS Navigation Kit available)
Synchronization tools	Mini-USB desktop synchronisation cable
Expandability
Expansion slots	64-bit Micro SD card slot
External I/O ports	1 mini-USB connector for synchronization and charging
Memory slots	64-bit Micro SD card slot - for memory expansion
Software
Software included	HP iPAQ Mobile Broadband Connect, HP VoiceReply, Voice Commander, MMS Composer, BluetoothÆ Manager, Certificate Enroller, HP Photosmart Mobile, HP Help and Support, HP QuickStart Tour, HP Enterprise Mobility Agent
Pre-installed software	OutlookÆ Mobile, Office Mobile, Internet ExplorerÆ Mobile, Windows MediaÆ Player Mobile, Microsoft ActiveSync, Phone Dialer, Voice Notes, Calculator, Solitaire, Bubble Breaker, Microsoft Live Messenger, Microsoft Live Search
Security management	HP Enterprise Mobility Agent
Multimedia
Audio	Integrated microphone, receiver, speaker and stereo headphone jack
Integrated camera	Integrated 3.0 Megapixel autofocus camera, 4X digital zoom, 640 x 480 VGA resolution, 1280 x 1024 SXGA resolution
System features
Power requirements	AC Power - AC Input: 100~240 Vac, 50/60 Hz, AC Input current: 115 Vac 0.15 Aac max; 230 Vac 0.08 Aac max, Output Voltage: 5 Vdc (typical), Output current: 1 A (typical)
Ergonomic features	Numeric keypad with smart touch wheel, 3-way thumb wheel, 2 soft key buttons, send/end buttons, reset button, volume control, voice command, landscape/portrait key
Modem	HP iPAQ Mobile Broadband Connect to take your notebook over the high-speed HSDPA data network
Operating humidity range	90% RH
Warranty options	No warranty options
Operating temperature range	-10 to 55∞ C
Box content	Removable/rechargeable Lithium-Polymer 1590 mAh battery, AC adapter, 1 mini-USB synchronization/charge cable, stereo headphones, Getting Started Guide, HP iPAQ Companion CD

Externals and Hardware

In the box HP definitely win 1st prize for the most colourful box that I have ever seen containing a mobile device. I think the attempt is to inject an element of fun into what can be seen as quite a serious subject, especially when you part with a large amount of money to get at the prize within!! Inside the box, is the device itself, the charger, a single USB cable and stereo headpones. Underneath the first layer there is the getting started guide and a HP iPAQ companion CD. As with all my devices, I didn't get around to using the companion CD and didn't remove it from its sleeve. HP are the first manafacturer that I've seen who have printed getting started instructions on the inside of the box lid. I guess they must have heard that I very rarely RTFM and decided to put them where I wouldn't miss them! .

Convergence

With life becoming ever more hectic, PDAs that are being developed today have to evolve to suit that need. No longer are users happy to carry around a PDA, phone, etc; more functionality is demanded from the market and in an ever more pocketable form factor. The HP iPAQ 614C strives to meet these needs and therefore contains the following areas of functionality within the device: Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) Mobile (cell) Phone Camera GPS Navigation Unit Push Email Portable media player Laptop computer replacement As I proceed through the review you should able to decide for yourself whether the iPAQ614C ticks all the boxes.

Aesthetics The 614C is a visually appealing device. I was surprised to find that the device was larger than a standard candy bar style phone but having said that, it still fitted nicely in the hand. The 614C is extremely business like in appearance with its matt-black and silver garb, which isn't a surprise as the device is badged by HP as the 'Business Navigator'... That being said, my feeling is that the 614C is equally at home in a consumer setting and does not look out of place when compared to the majority of today's devices that are coming to market.

Front Moving in closer, we'll start with the front of the device. The first striking thing of note is the raised ring that appears to be embedded in the keypad. This is indeed a scroll wheel, but we'll look at that a bit more in depth later in the review. Starting at the top of the device one finds the output speaker cut-out just above the 2.8" QVGA screen. Beneath the screen there are the usual 2xhardware soft keys, followed by the 20 key keypad which as well as the number and alpha keys gives you access to the call answer/end functionality, windows mobile start menu, screen orientation and power on/off. I do like the inclusion of the Windows Mobile Start Menu key. I find it incredibly useful on those devices that have it when attempting to use the device one hande.

Top Sliding around to the top, notice that the device is incredibly spartan here, with only a single button. But that one button has an incredibly useful function. A-La Palm, this one button allows you to toggle the device sound on and off. If you ever used a palm device (and I have), you soon come to rely on this functionality. To be honest, I don't know why more device manafacturers don't incude this type of thing.

Bottom Slipping down to the bottom of the device there is what is pretty much standard Windows Mobile device fare, the Mini-USB socket. This socket allows for charging, connecting the 614C to your PC via a USB cable and last but not least, connection of the supplied headphones. To the right of the Mini-USB socket, there is a clearly marked reset button. This provides a way to restart the device via hardware should it become un-responsive or locked-up completely.

Right Moving to the right, the 614C is equally as spartan as the top. Towards the top end of the device is the camera button, moving towards the bottom of the device there is a little soft plastic cover, but as I couldn't work out what it was for, I didn't feel brave enough to attempt to remove it from the supplied review device just in case!!

Left Finally flipping over to the left of the device at the top there s an OK button, what initially looks like a scroll wheel and last but not least, a voice command button. The position of the OK button is a little different from other devices. If I remember correctly, the OK button is lower down on other devices such as the original HTC Hermes. But having said that the higher position didn't really cause me any issues in use. Now onto the scroll wheel, well, it's not a wheel really, it's a three position rocker switch or thumb-wheel might be a better description. Although it works just as well as the scroll wheels that I've used on other devices such as the HTC Kaiser and various Blackberries. The final button is the voice command button, a quick press of this launches the HP Voice Command application. I'm not a big fan of using voice command type software, so I really didn't get to give this a thorough run-through.

Headset Many people, including me, now rely on a converged device for media playback as well as communications. The major benefit being that I don't really want to be carrying two devices around with me if I don't have to. The supplied headphones follow the trend of current devices being of the in-ear type. The audio quality throught them is excellent, I was definitely pleasantly surprised. I had no issues with volume levels at all and both music and podcasts sounded very good when played back. The only thing of concern to me was the lack of the little foam pads to put over the ear-buds, although this is not specific to HP as many manafacturers don't supply them. I find that I can't use in-ear type earphones without the foam covers as they keep falling out, the inside of my ears must be larger than most!

Size As mentioned previously, for a candy bar style device, the HP iPAQ 614C is still quite a large device when compared to something else in the candy bar type like the HTC S730. The table below provides an excellent device size comparison built up from many 4WM reviews and as you can see, the 614C is quite a large device indeed.

Screen Now I've arrived at what is the very core of a converged device, the screen. On the iPAQ 614C, the screen is excellent, it is a 2.8" QVGA panel at 240x320 and is both clear and bright. The orientation switch from portrait to landscape was instantaneous, or at least in my perception it was the quickest device that I've used thus far in that respect. The only issue that occurred to me during use was the raised bezel around the edges of the screen, which appeared to be higher than most and slightly hampered using small scroll bars at the edges of the screen if not using the stylus.

Keypad Almost as important as the screen is the method of data entry. This comes in many shapes and forms on different devices, ranging from touch-screen based SIP's (software input panels), front facing and slide-out full keyboards, to standard numeric keypads. The method of data entry is a very personal thing. I prefer the front facing and slide out full hardware keyboards, but many people also prefer the onscreen keyboards that offer a more svelte device size. The keypad on the 614C is of the numeric keypad type, offering T9 predictive text input. Unfortunately, I live my life within email during the business day and I found the numeric keypad too restrictive in allowing me to quickly reply to the many emails I get. Remember though, this is just my personal opinion and other people's mileage may vary in this regard, but it is something to be aware of if you input a lot of data. As previously mentioned the most striking feature is the embedded scroll wheel... Well, it's not really a scroll wheel, but HP describe it as a Smartwheel, so we'll call it that from now on. As well as being able to scroll around the outside edge of the Smartwheel, you can also start with your finger in the middle and swipe up, down, left or right to generate cursor movements as you would with a traditional DPAD, although it did take me a while to discover this fact as I don't believe in RTFMing unless absolutely necessary. The Smartwheel worked very well in operation once I had got used to it, in fact I became quite nimble with it!!

GPS The iPAQ 614C isn't called the Business Navigator for nothing. It comes complete with a built-in GPS receiver. Unfortunately, the specs that I had for the device from the HP website did not specify what make of GPS receiver it is. I couldn't really install TomTom navigator on the 614C as I didn't want to go through the rigmarole of trying to get another activation key via TomTom support due to the short nature of having a supplied review device. So, I made do with the rather excellent Google Maps to test out the GPS function. Note that the HP device comes pre-loaded with Googe Maps, but it is only the v1 incarnation, so it is recommended that you upgrade to the latest version to reap the beneits of the extra features that are on offer. Simply point your mobile device browser to Google Maps. Whilst I didn't conduct any speed tests in the short time I had with the device, getting a GPS lock didn't take long and as you can see from the screen shot, it located my village with no problems at all!!

Applications Let's move on to the applications that come installed on the device. In this section, I won't go through the standard applications provided, such as Office Mobile, but instead I will concentrate on the extras that HP have included. Admittedly, due to the lost files I don't have a complete set of screens for some of the apps, but I will mention them here. HP Help and Support. Not being an RTFM type of guy, I didn't make use of the HP Help and Support application at all, but it is there if you need it. HP iPAQ tips. The same goes for HP iPAQ Tips, I just didn't feel drawn to access the application in the short time I spent with the device. Voice Commander. All throughout my PDA history, the one thing that I have never got on with is voice recognition or voice control applications, to be honest, I've never really found the need to use them. But despite my general sceptism here, everything I've read about HP voice commander in other reviews has been completely positive.

HP Short Cuts The first application of note is HP Short Cuts. It does exactly what the name suggests by providing short-cuts to a range of applications. The shortcuts menu is activated by the right hand softkey, initially displaying a list of the default applications the device comes configured with as standard. These choices are of course customisable, so you can set the short-cuts for your most commonly used applications! Another useful feature is that you can navigate the short-cut list in two ways, one by using the Smartwheel's directional capabilities, the other beng simply pressing the relevant number on the keypad. I must admit, I found this feature incredibly useful and used it quite a lot during my time with the device. Well done HP for including a very useful app!!

HP PhotoSmart Mobile As well as the Pictures and Videos application that comes as part of the base Windows Mobile OS, HP have included their own Photosmart Mobile Software. Now I'm not a great one for graphics applications, but from my limited playing around, Photosmart Mobile is a lot slicker and more sophisticated than the built-in software.

ROM and Memory HP have beefed up the memory on the 614C, it comes with a healthy 256Mb ROM and 128Mb RAM. After a clean-start or hard-reset this leaves approxmately 117Mb of storage space for applications and 70Mb of RAM for running programs. Not too shabby in my book. I must say I'm also very glad to see that HP have continued to include the iPAQ Filestore, which is extra non-volatile memory that can be used to store applications or data.

Battery The included battery is a 3.7v 1590Mah unit, which is very large compared to a device like the HTC Diamond and its 900Mah battery pack. On a pretty average day for me, the 614C was taken off charge at 07:00, not much email as I was working from home, but plenty of phone calls, good use of Wi-Fi to keep up on RSS feeds during the day and at 19:30 in the evening, the battery life was showing at 45%. My second day of battery observation was more eventful, the 614C was taken off charge at 06:30, throw quite a few emails and the usual lots of calls into the mix, along with keeping up on those RSS feeds over HSDPA and as at 15:00 the battery was showing at 34%. This would definitely see me home, but the device then needed charging in the evening. This is quite good for devices that I use as I normally end up having to charge during the day to keep other devices going. Another interesting feature is the ability to control whether the device will charge via USB, you can even control the charging rate by selecting either slow or fast charge. I've not seen this functionality on any other device, so I am assuming that it is something that HP have added into the mix.

Camera The camera on the 614C is a 3.0 Megapixel affair with auto-focus and 4x digital zoom. Once again I must apologise as I lost all my original picture files taken with the device, so thanks go out to PocketPCSoft.net for allowing the use of their images, and that is what you can see here! To my untrained eye, (I'm no photographic expert, but I know what I like!!), the pictures that the 614C produced looked pretty good. Maybe a bit more colour depth may have been a good thing, but over-all, it easily matched and even bested other devices I have used.

Pros and Cons

Excellent Screen	Larger than expected
Plenty of Storage	Unusually deep screen bezel
Plenty of RAM
Innovative Smartwheel
Fast 520Mhz Processor
Strong Signal Reception

Overall Conclusion There's no doubt about it, the HP iPAQ 614C is a quality device. A little larger than the usual candy bar style of smartphone, but in reality this only serves to increase its usability as a PDA. From the connectivity point of view, the 614C offers everything you could need with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, not forgetting quad band GSM and Tri-band HSDPA, which means the 614C would make a great companion on many a trip. Let's also not leave out the GPS functionality, as for many people GPS is a must these days and nearly every device sports some form of GPS capability. The T9 text input via the numeric keypad is adequate, but the addition of Touchpal made data entry a lot easier for me, but that is definitely just my opinion and I am known for being a hardware keyboard fan-boy, which means this should just be taken as my personal preference. All in all, the HP is a great all-round device, I found no real major issues and thoroughly enjoyed my time with it, especially the great audio playback. I guess the question on everybody's is whether the device is a keeper or not for me, in this instance and in my opinion only unfortunately not as I need my keyboard!