HP iPAQ h6365

HP shows that you really can be all things to all people — if you’re prepared to compromise.
The iPAQ h6365 isn’t the first converged PDA phone, but HP has learned from 02, iMate and PalmOne. With Bluetooth, 802.11b Wi-Fi, quad band GSM and GPRS, almost all connectivity options are covered. The only compromise is the stumpy antenna, but it does make it easier to extract the h6365 from the supplied belt case.
You’d expect such a well-equipped device to feel like an unwieldy slab, but the h6365 measures a trim 14.1 x 7.6 x 2cm and is comfortable to handle. It lacks an integrated keyboard but ships with a removable thumb-board for easy data input. The 240 x 320 3.5in screen suffers from the same yellow tinge as many other iPAQs and is hard to read at some angles. HP has retained the lower resolution to help maximise battery life.
With converged devices, phone operation is critical. Speaker volume and clarity are good and toggling the phone on and off is easy. There’s support for different profiles and a headset can be connected, although the jack is under an annoying rubber cover. A better option is a Bluetooth headset. The h6365 has multimedia capability in the shape of a VGA camera and supporting software. Pictures can be stored in the 57MB of user-accessible RAM or 20MB permanent filestore. The iPAQ also has a card slot that supports SDIO, SD and MMC.
HP has equipped the h6365 with a Tl OMAP 1510 processor running at 200MHz. Running a low-powered CPU led to an Spb Benchmark result of 756, putting it among the slower devices in its class. In contrast, the surprising graphics score of 1,687 was almost three times that of the popular h2210.
Battery life is all-important and HP has loaded up the h6365 with a huge, removable 1,800mAh cell — APC’s standard MP3 loopback test with the screen at full brightness and the phone radio on ran for over ten hours. With moderate use of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, this should mean up to three days between charges. All that’s missing is a convenient battery gauge.
Overall, the iPAQ h6365 is one of the better converged devices we’ve tested. And while compromises have been made, they maximise battery life. However, the screen’s yellow tinge is a significant issue that HP needs to address.