HP iPAQ hw6515 Brief Preview

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Here is a brief preview about the lates PDA from Hewlett-Packard's, the hw6515 Pocket PC phone.

Size wise the hw6515 is HP's smallest iPAQ yet and the one that most closely resembles a phone. The unit's dimensions are 4.65 x 2.80 x .83 (HWD, in inches) and it weighs a scant 5.82 ounces, which makes it almost an inch shorter and an ounce lighter than the PDA-sized h6300 series.

The hw6515 smartphone eschews the 6300's snap-on external keyboard and stub antenna in favor of an integrated keyboard (Treo anyone?) and an antenna that's completely internal to the device. Shrinking the PDA form factor while adding a keyboard necessitated a screen smaller than the standard 3.5-inch variety found on most Windows-based handhelds, but it's still a good deal larger than that on most smartphones.

The hw6515's TFT display measures a mere 3 inches diagonally and is square rather than rectangular, which results in a lower horizontal resolution of 240 x 240 pixels (with 65K colors) instead of 320 x 240 pixels. This does give you significantly less real estate and could require considerable scrolling in some applications.

The hw6515 runs Windows Mobile 2003 and is powered by a version of the Intel PXA270 processor. The hw6515's processor runs at a relatively modest 312 MHz, and while the unit's responsiveness was acceptable overall, it did periodically exhibit and inordinately long delay when loading or switching between some applications. 64 MB RAM and 64MB of ROM are internal to the unit, and there's 56 MB or memory available for user storage, which includes a non-volatile 12 MB iPAQ File Store.

Included is a 1.3 megapixel camera (with a flash and 8x digital zoom) that's also capable of motion video capture. Although HP bestows the camera feature with the same PhotoSmart brand name it gives its dedicated digital cameras, you won't mistake snapshots from the hw6515 for the output from a stand-alone camera. Also built into the hw6515 is a GPS receiver that lets you use the unit as a navigation system. Unlike most other similarly equipped handhelds, the hw6515 uses a GPS antenna internal to the unit. The bad news is that HP doesn't include any GPS software with the hw6515. The good news is that leaves you free to choose your own, though it does increase the ultimate cost of the unit.

The one major feature that's notably absent in the hw6515 is built-in Wi-Fi (though you do get Bluetooth). Wi-Fi is arguably expendable in a device that can access the Internet via the mobile network, since the hw6515 supports Class 10 EDGE for data tranmission. The presence of both miniSD and Secure Digital (SD) slots affords the opportunity to add Wi-Fi without sacrificing memory expansion, but the SD slot's location in the middle of the right side of the unit may make holding the unit with a protruding antenna somewhat awkward.

Powering the hw6515 is a 1200 mAh Lithium-Ion battery that is user- changeable. I got about 12 hours of standby time out of the battery, but that was without using it or operating the backlight for more than a few minutes at a time. Basically the hw6515 manages to pack quite a lot of capability into a small, light, and easy-to-use package. It's not perfect—it could use longer battery life and a perhaps a bit faster CPU-—but it's a big step forward from HP's previous generation and it's arguably the best melding of phone and PDA on the Windows platform to date.