[article]HW6915 Review

[luk]

Hi Greg! Using the Assisted - GPS you have to make frequent connections with the data base through GPRS to have good and quick satellite detection. How often has this to be done? Can I also synchronize through Wifi?

Luk

[gregh]

hi guys,

Halycon, to be honest if the GPS works it's fine by me, and it does work great, especially since the latest ROM update has upgraded the GPS driver.

I have never seen or used the Dell device so it would be unfair of me to make any comparisons. However I used to have another iPAQ with a seperate GPS mouse and it's alot easier having everything integrated and one less thing to charge when on long journeys!

Luk - the GPS assist needs updating ever 48 hours, you can do it via any internet means inc wi-fi and automatically via ActiveSync.

Hope that helps!

Regards,

Greg

[gregh]

Just one other update to my origional thoughts, I now have push email working and it is fantastic!!!

Great when I'm travelling and has really cut down on the amount of unread email waiting for me when I am out of the office.

regards,

Greg

[nitinkolhe]

Dear Gregh,

I am interested in buying 6915. I am new to this forum. What is the difference between 6515 and 6915? I will be grateful if you let me know.

Nitin

[magin846]

I was probably being unclear in my question. I'll try to clarify myself. :-)

As you know the 6500 ans 6900 share the resolution of 240x240 on the screen. Some programs (mostly games) are hard coded for 240x320 and will either crash or partially disappear on the screen.

With Nyditot Virtual Display 5.0 you can "fake" a 240x320 display and hopefully get some (or all) of the troublemakers to work.

So, I just wanted to know if Nyditot Virtual Display 5.0 worked on the 6900 or not. I don't have any specific program to recommend testing with though. (Maybe big2? http://www.freewareppc.com/games/big2.shtml)

[gregh]

Hi Michel,

Outlook is there, it's now called messaging as it integrates Outlook, SMS, MMS, and POP3/IMAP servers

Windows Mobile 5 now stores programs in ROM and uses RAM for running programs, hence the 6915 has 128mb ROM and 64mb RAM. There is a really good explanation on this web site here

I'd love a bigger mini SD card, I hope they do follow SD sizing and increase shortly.

Hope this helps,

regards,

Greg

[gregh]

I've been lucky enough to have access to an early proto type of the hw6915 for 2 weeks now. **PICS NOW ADDED**

I have used it every day for phone, email, surfing the net and navigation in my car.

So here are my thoughts about the device. I don't think it's fair to call this a review as the device is not shipping yet and I effectively have beta software on it.

However it is an announced product, so I'm happy to discuss it.

So my challenge I set myself was could I stop using my normal mobile phone, my other iPAQ with TomTom and Bluetooth GPS receiver and also could I cut down on laptop use.

So far it's been great, it does everything I wanted and then some!

So how does it fair for the kind of things I've been doing?

Email on the go? Unfortunately my company hasn't enabled push email on our Exchange servers, however once set up to sync every 15 minutes over GPRS has worked fine. I have set up 3 email accounts, one for Exchange, one for my IMAP private email and one for Hotmail. All have worked fine over Activesync, GPRS and WiFi.

HP's messaging software has integrated SMS, Email and MMS into one application which works well. The only downside I have found is that when someone sent me an SMS with a business card inside it, the application didn't know how to handle it.

The software HP have written around the

[magin846]

Gregh,

Thanks for the review! Looks like a great machine! Do you think it would be possible for you to post the full size versions of the pictures you took with the 6915 so that camera quality can be further assessed?

[gregh]

Sure, I've edited the review now, so if you click the thumbnail you'll get the origonal. The bottom two have been rotated and re-saved as a JPEG, which will have lost a little detail.

To be honest these were taken late afternoon with very poor light, so don't judge too much into them! I'll try and get some more in sunlight!!

regards,

greg

[magin846]

Gregh,

Just saw that http://www.nyditot.com/Products.asp came out with Nyditot Virtual Display 5.0, compatible with WM5. They have a trial available. Would it be possible for you to download the trial and try it out? (Hopefully this would make alot of the programs that require 320x240 work)

[gregh]

hi there,

From what I've found, any program that supports WM5 seems to work ok on the 6900, ie TomTom, Fizz Traveller, ewallet, SPB Pocket+, Opera

So I'm not sure what benefit Virtual Display would give me!

Are there any specific programs you are worried about?

regards,

greg

[sfb]

The 6915 is the newer model - it has:

- more memory
- faster processor (~400Mhz)
- built in wireless networking
- Windows Mobile 5

and it loses the SD card slot that the 6315 has, and only keeps the mini-sd slot.

[Michel Merlin]

Thanks gregh for your great and early review of Thu 2 Mar 2006 14:21. I am interested to compare with my good old h2215, bought in US in Oct 2003 (Windows Mobile 2003 FE).

On the HP UK iPAQ Pocket PCs page, when comparing the hw6515 vs hw6915, I noticed the hw6915 has:

no more Outlook;

no more SD slot;

still no more than 64MB RAM

I guess this may be just an error from the webmaster... or does it? If not:

How can one be productive with a Pocket PC without Outlook?

How and when find 4GB cards in good prices and availability if restricted to the too recent Mini SD format (compared to SD)?

It seems PDAs haven't increased their RAM size at the same pace as PCs (where standard RAM is now 512MB-1GB); 64MB hasn't changed for years, and now looks poor (or do they expect users to use the miniSD instead? but this would need - at least - that HP corrects the way Flash card is handled).

What do you think of those questions, after actually trying the hw6915? TIA,

Paris, Wed 29 Mar 2006

[halcyon]

This is what I was looking for - thanks a lot Gregh.

[gregh]

Link to article

I've been lucky enough to have access to an early proto type of the hw6915 for 2 weeks now. **PICS NOW ADDED**



I have used it every day for phone, email, surfing the net and navigation in my car.



So here are my thoughts about the device. I don't think it's fair to call this a review as the device is not shipping yet and I effectively have beta software on it.



However it is an announced product, so I'm happy to discuss it.



So my challenge I set myself was could I stop using my normal mobile phone, my other iPAQ with TomTom and Bluetooth [span style=font-weight: 400; font-size: 12px; position: static; font-family: Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif,arial; color: blue][span style=font-weight: 400; font-size: 12px; position: static; font-family: Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif,arial; color: blue c. . .