Windows Phone Thoughts: Take Another Loox - The N560 Pocket PC Reviewed

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Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Take Another Loox - The N560 Pocket PC Reviewed

Posted by Doug Raeburn in "HARDWARE" @ 08:00 AM


Battery Performance
I didn't perform a test to determine how long it takes to drain the battery; instead I monitored battery performance during common usage. With the processor on automatic and the backlight about ¾ up the scale, I found that after reading an e-book for one hour, the battery level would be at around 75 - 80%. Since the battery can be drained almost completely on WM 2005 units before the battery needs to be recharged, I would expect a life of around four hours under these conditions, which is about average performance in my experience.

GPS Performance
The N560 received some criticism recently in a review from another site for taking a long time (up to 10 minutes) to determine its initial location. In my experience, the initial startup did take several minutes. This is typical because GPS receivers boost performance by remembering as much as possible from the last time they were used and only refreshing data that has become stale. The first time a receiver is activated (or when the unit needs to reinitialize because it's far enough away from its last location to change the satellites that it would use), the amount of data that needs to be downloaded is significant and can take several minutes.

However, for most people, the key performance measurement is the time it takes the receiver to determine location when it doesn't have to initialize. Using OnCourse Navigator 5 as my navigation software, I found that the N560 took around 20 - 60 seconds to get a location fix. This is comparable to the performance of my Bluetooth GPS receivers. So I found the GPS performance of the N560 to be satisfactory.

And the N560 was able to overcome my preference for a Bluetooth GPS receiver. The rationale behind this preference was that I liked the idea of having the separate GPS receiver on the dashboard for optimal reception, while allowing the navigator to sit comfortably in his seat while using the navigation software on the Pocket PC.

But this rationale was about to change. As part of my review, I took the N560 on a recent vacation in order to stress test its navigation capabilities. I was vacationing about 2000 miles from home, so the GPS had to reinitialize. This took about 5 minutes, a fine showing. From that point on, a fix was achieved in about 20 - 60 seconds, as stated earlier. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was able to sit comfortably in the passenger seat using the Pocket PC while the GPS reliably retained its fix. So it seems I'll be using the N560's built-in GPS receiver after all. And I like the idea of having a complete navigation solution in the one unit. I'm sure that will result in more use of the navigation software, since I can use it on the spur of the moment without having to remember to bring the Bluetooth GPS.

Conclusions
Overall, I find the Loox N560 to be a worthy upgrade to the Loox 720. Its compact size and light weight make it easy to carry around, its VGA display is bright and beautiful and performance is responsive. Its stability is most impressive, in that soft resets are very rarely required and "heavy duty" applications like PlanMaker run very smoothly. The N560 is most definitely the finest Pocket PC that I've used and should be on the short list of anyone in the market for a top notch PDA.

Doug Raeburn is a data architect specializing in data warehouse design. He lives in Pewaukee, Wisconsin, USA.

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