Windows Phone Thoughts: The New iPAQ Mobile Messenger: hw6915 - A Tough Package To Beat

Thumbing Through
One of the items that interested me most on the hw6915 was the thumb keyboard. With thumb keyboards seemingly in style now, I've found there is a difference between a thumb keyboard and a usable thumb keyboard! The original iPAQ keyboard that came standard on my h6315 consisted of little round buttons, with no backlight which made it unusable in low-light. The hw6500 series keyboard got a backlight (blue) but kept the same basic look. With the hw6900 series, the look hasn't changed much, but the backlight is night and day different than its predecessors. Just check out the pictures below:


Figure 20: Keyboard close up, no backlight, in a lit office.


Figure 21: Backlight on, in a fully lit office.


Figure 22: No backlight, dark office, screen on.


Figure 23: Backlight in a dark office - anyone need a flashlight?

As you can see, the backlight on this thing is not dim by any stretch of the imagination. It was actually bright enough for me to use it to navigate a dark house at night! I'd say that's pretty good backlighting, which goes a long way toward total usability. My previous full-time Pocket PC, the i-Mate K-JAM, also included a thumb keyboard, however it was slightly different.


Figure 24: i-Mate K-JAM keyboard compared to the hw6900 series.

The differences are fairly obvious, the orientation allows the keys on the K-JAM to be bigger. The keys on the K-JAM were also different than the hw6900 series in other ways. For one, the K-JAM's keys had just enough tactile feel to them to give a good "thumbing" feedback to the user. There was no mistaking if a key had been pressed or not. The hw6900 series notches it up even more with a very resounding "click" noise on each button press. This clicking is very good reassurance that you've pressed a button (not that any of us would be, say, driving and tapping a phone number in or anything), but it can also be a downfall. Namely, it's very hard to tap in messages or notes when sitting in a meeting as others will hear the clicks fairly easily. I resorted to typing out my responses with the stylus on the SIP (screen input) keyboard (i.e. the old fashioned way), but this left me with painfully little room on the screen. If you're concerned about thumb keyboarding un-obtrusively, this device is not for you. The keyboard also, in addition to providing good feedback, features a number pad on the right hand side (compared with the popular Treo which places it on the left). The number keypad becomes active by default whenever you're on the dialing screen, and allows you to enter phone numbers with ease.


Figure 25: Keyboard options.

Finally, the hw6900 series keyboard allows the user to change a few small options in Control Panel, including backlight time-out and key repeat control. The option to disable the keyboard seems largely useless to me. This keyboard requires a significant amount of tactile force to press a key, which makes me believe that accidental key presses will be highly unlikely. In placing the unit into a tighter space, such as a jeans pocket, it becomes clear that the joystick, not the keyboard, is the most accidentally-prone-to-activate input feature on the device.