Monday, January 19, 2004
Breaking the Mold: The HP iPAQ 4350
Posted by Don Tolson in "HARDWARE" @ 10:00 AM
Benchmark Results
OK, so how does the iPAQ 4350 REALLY compare to the other Pocket PCs out there? I ran a selection of the Spb Benchmark set, including those tests which I thought would be of most interest to the average user.
First off are the overall performance comparisons. Here are the Platform, Benchmark, and CPU indices.
Figure 19: Spb Platform Index.
Figure 20: Spb Benchmark Index.
Figure 21: Spb CPU Index.
As you can see, the 4350 acquits itself very nicely in comparison with the current 'powerhouses' in the Pocket PC world. The Benchmark test combines scores from all the tests completed to come up with a composite, so my test results against the 4150 may not be really fair. When I ran the ActiveSync test, I used a Bluetooth connection, rather than a cable. Here are the results:
Figure 22: Spb Activesync Test results.
Using the Bluetooth connection caused the 4350 to come out the worst of the bunch in this test, but I thought it might be fun to see how slow a Bluetooth Activesync connection really was compared to wired connections.
The battery on this unit is phenomenal -- especially when compared to the iPAQ 2200 series. As I mentioned before, it's a 1560 mAh unit, which is physically longer and slimmer than the unit in the 2215. According to the HP specs, you might be able to get as much as 17 hours with no backlight or WiFi. I'm not exactly sure, but my impression is that it's even better than the battery life I used to get with my Jornada 568!
Here are the results from the Spb Battery Tests:
Figure 23: Battery Test #1 - Maximum Backlight, Std. Usage.
I ran this same test for normal usage but with the backlight off. After 9hr 30 min, it still had over 30% left!!
Figure 24: Battery Test #2 - Max. Backlight, Bluetooth activated.
Note that the above test is with only the Bluetooth activated. No other applications were running.
Figure 25: Battery Test #3 - Max. Backlight, WiFi activated.
Interesting how much power the WiFi takes... I tried to get the Spb MP3 benchmark battery test to work, but it kept giving me failures. Maybe I didn't understand the setup instructions. I started getting Battery Low warning messages when the main battery reached 25%.
