HP iPAQ h6315-Convergence At Last

Most of the Pocket PC owners I know also carry a separate cellular phone, and with both devices clipped to their hips, they display the ultimate in geek fashion—the Batman Utility Belt look. HP's new iPAQ h6315 helps banish the Utility Belt look by combining a stylish Pocket PC with a quad-band GSM/GPRS mobile phone that allows you to make voice calls on GSM networks worldwide, as well as send and receive data on the GPRS network.

HP iPAQ h6315

3-way wireless

With GSM/GPRS you can access the Internet, send and receive e-mail, and more. GPRS network throughput will vary, but they are generally good for about 56 kbps. If that isn't fast enough for you, the h6315 also comes with built in Wi-Fi (802.11b) wireless access, allowing you to surf the Internet at high speed from an office, home, or other Wi-Fi hotspot.

The onboard Wi-Fi allows you to roam relatively seamlessly between the GPRS public carrier network and a private Wi-Fi network. For example, I was able to configure my h6315 to pick up my e-mail while I was in the office through a Wi-Fi access point attached to our LAN. When I left work, it automatically switched to my GPRS network and continued to update the messages on my device while I was on the drive home.

In addition, the h6315 can connect to a Wireless Personal Area Network using its built-in Bluetooth capability. Specifically, the h6315 can communicate with other Bluetooth-equipped devices and accessories that are within 30 feet of it. For example, you can use a wireless Bluetooth headset to talk on the phone, or send a Word document to a Bluetooth-enabled printer, or connect the iPAQ to a Bluetooth-enabled GPS receiver for personal navigation.

The h6315's on-board wireless capability is very powerful, turning the iPAQ into a truly “convergent” device supporting ubiquitous voice and data access from a single platform.

Push e-mail courtesy of T-Mobile

Even though I have been a Pocket PC user for years, until recently I still carried a BlackBerry with me. The BlackBerry excels in the ability to handle e-mail that has been “pushed” to it. Pushing is the process whereby an e-mail server sends newly received messages to the client device without the client having to request it. Pushing insures that you receive important e-mail immediately.

Wireless service is provided by HP's launch partner, T-Mobile. Push e-mail delivery is accomplished through a Web service hosted by T-Mobile. This service scans your IMAP, POP3, or Outlook Web Access Inbox. When it finds a new message, a system called “E-mail Triggers” sends a message to your iPAQ telling it to connect to the e-mail server and download the new message. All this is happening automatically.

It isn't true push, but the results are nearly the same. This does raise some security concerns as your account name and password are stored on T-Mobile's servers. This is a useful tool for the individual, but probably of limited value for larger corporate deployments. The more security-conscious customers should look at push e-mail solutions from enterprise oriented vendors such as Good Technologies (http://www.good.com) and Visto (http://www.visto.com).

Snap-on keyboard and built-in camera

You can use the h6315's on-screen keyboard or transcriber to jot down short notes, but some people find it difficult to write longer messages with a stylus. To make it easier to enter data, HP includes a snap-on QWERTY thumb keyboard, which is very easy to type on. The downside is that it is another accessory you must carry with you and risk losing. Also, with the keyboard snapped on, the already somewhat bulky iPAQ becomes more so. Still, BlackBerry users love the thumb keyboard built into that device, and including a snap-on keyboard was a good idea.