Windows Phone Thoughts: HP iPAQ 2215 - The New Shining Star in the Pocket PC Galaxy?

What’s in the ROM Tom?
If your name is Tom, consider yourself lucky, because I’m writing this section just for you. Seriously. Here’s what’s in the ROM from HP:

iPAQ Image Viewer: This is the same application that comes with the iPAQ 5450, and to be frank, it's not a great image viewer. It scans the My Documents folder for images, but doesn't look any deeper, so if you have images in the My Pictures folder, it won't see them unless you manually type in the path or open the file picker. Why not just scan the entire My Documents folder and show the user what’s there? There’s no intelligent sensing to auto-rotate a photo, so you’ll have to do that manually for each image. The app had a tendency to spazz out on me as well – I’d be in slideshow mode, press the d-pad forward once, and it would quickly go through four images instead of just one.

ClearType Tuner: This simple application allows you to adjust the ClearType effect. I can only describe the effect as “heavy font” and “light font”. I prefer to leave it at the far left for a “fat font” ClearType effect. I also like that the iPAQ 2215 offers system-wide ClearType like previous Pocket PC 2002 units.


Figure 11: The iPAQ 2215 includes a ClearType tuner.

iTask: Like several iPAQs before it, the 2215 includes iTask. I don’t want to offend the developer who wrote this application, but while it’s functionally very powerful, the user interface is cumbersome and worst of all, the graphic design makes is painfully evident that it doesn’t belong as part of the operating system. A little bit of polishing would allow this app to fit in. I’ll just install Pocket Plus anyway. ;-)


Figure 12: One of these things is not like the other…

Diagnostic Toolkit: This application is a refined version of the iPAQ self-test and would likely help HP tech support pinpoint problems on the device.

iPAQ Backup: This is the OEM version of Sprite Software’s Pocket Backup, by far the best backup software on the market today for the Pocket PC. HP made a wise decision by bundling this software with their device, but I fear without some sort of reminder when the user first turns on the device, they may never set up the scheduling feature and have a backup when they need it.

Diagnostic Toolkit: This application is a refined version of the iPAQ self-test and would likely help HP tech support pinpoint problems on the device. Not much here for the end user, unless you run into trouble and want to self-diagnose. Remember to turn your head and cough!

Nevo Remote Control: The 2215 is a consumer device, so HP did the right thing by enhancing the IR strength and adding in the excellent Nevo. I won't do a full review here, but suffice it to say that if you've been looking for a universal remote, Nevo will do the trick. I used it on my 5450 to program my entire entertainment system and it worked perfectly.

Power: The Lifeblood of the Pocket PC
If there's one thing that no Pocket PC has managed to ever do is have such immensely good battery life that it's not an issue. We're certainly light years ahead of the atrocious battery life of the iPAQ 3650, but the 2215 won't win any awards for battery life. In order to keep the size of the unit down, HP put in a small battery – only 900 mAH. Compare that to the massive 1440 mAH battery of the Dell Axim X5 and you can see the 2215 won't last as long as some other devices. The good news is that with Pocket PC 2003, the battery warning goes off at 25% instead of the normal 40% from Pocket PC 2002. This takes away the irritation if nothing else.


Figure 13: The 900mAH removable battery on the iPAQ 2215. It's great that HP has moved to removeable batteries on all their devices.

Using Spb Benchmark, I found the following:

• Maximum backlight, looping WMV video playback: 3 hours, 57 minutes
  
• Display off, looping MP3 audio file: 8 hours 35 minutes
  
• Maximum backlight, standard use test: 5 hours 39 minutes
  
• Maximum backlight, Bluetooth active, no use: 5 hours 54 minutes

As you can see, this is just a little shy of the 12 hours HP quotes as the effective battery life on their Web site. :roll: The battery was fairly quick to charge: in two separate tests using Spb Benchmark, the battery was recharged from flat to full in an average of 1 hour and 47 minutes.