Day-to-Day Use

I have to admit the embedded front panel keyboard form factor is not one that’s held a lot of appeal to me. The only other time I’ve used a unit like this was when I was working on a project where the client handed me a Blackberry on the first day I arrived and made it abundantly clear that its use was mandatory. In short, the experience wasn’t pleasant. I’d grown used to WM-based devices and all the utility applications available to customize it, so it was difficult to adjust to the RIM’s limited O/S and software. And I hated the fact that I had to give up the touch screen! On top of that, the client executive were addicted to these things and it kept buzzing at my hip every 5 seconds or so, sometimes until 11pm! Sheesh! Anyway, none of that really has much to do with the HP iPAQ 910c Business Manager, except that it shares the form factor with the Blackberry and hence, coloured my initial expectations.

I’m happy to say though, that after working with the 910c for a couple of weeks as my primary PDA, I was impressed with its capabilities as a WM-based phone and by the convenience of having the keyboard always at hand. There are definite advantages over the screen/software–based keyboards in terms of accuracy and accessibility. The lack of weight and bulkiness also removed the need for my belt clip to keep the unit close at hand -- the 910c easily slips into a shirt, jacket or pants pocket.

Having both the keyboard and the touchscreen available made daily use of the 910c very straightforward and intuitive. I have to admit though, that I'm getting a bit spoiled by the gesture-based Today-screen interfaces that are being developed. They provide a much classier overall look and feel to the various functions of a Phone/PDA and it felt kind of retro going back to the vanilla Windows Mobile 6 interface. This isn't much of a difficulty though, since it would be easy enough to install something like Spb Mobile Shell or any of the other replacements available for the Windows Mobile platform. Unfortunately, the bezel around the screen does make it difficult to access some of the controls at the screen edges with a finger. All the assorted accessory applications I loaded onto the 910c worked flawlessly. (The only exception was OnCourse Navigator/iGo 8, but I'll get into that later.)

Radios

Generally, the radios provided with the 910c were as good as any found in combo phone/PDAs. Sensitivity and stability were both very good. The 910c provides the typical LEDs on the front panel to let you know when each of them is activated and operational. Unfortunately, the same LEDs are used to show when the battery is charging, so it can be a bit confusing trying to determine what's what.

Cellular

The cellular radio is a quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) which supports worldwide GSM networks. The 910c is HP's first handset with tri-band (900/1900/2100) UMTS/HSDPA, which will support full 3G/HSPDA data transfers of up to 7.2Kbps anwhere that the service is available. Fortunately, my provider (Rogers) has both 3G and H service in my area, so I was able to check out the high speed email and web browsing of the unit. On the whole, the 910c performed as well as HTC units I've reviewed which had more powerful processors.

The phone portion of the unit worked consistently well, providing clear, stable connections almost everywhere in my vendor's coverage area. Generally, the number of 'bars' available was the same as other phones I have or have tested. I did find though, that incoming call volume varied considerably more than I was used to with other phones. A couple of calls almost blew my ears off while others were almost inaudible. There were no complaints from people I called regarding volume, tone or signal quality.

Unfortunately, although Google Maps software is provided with the unit, integration with the GPRS radio is not working. Normally, the My Location feature of Google Maps is able to use cell phone tower triangulation to give you a rough fix of where you are, but on the 910c, the software reports that the device is not compatible with this feature. The My Location feature does work very well with the GPS radio though (see below).

Bluetooth

The Bluetooth radio provided is 2.0 compatible with Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) support. It was easily able to pair up with my Helium HT-650 headset, Motorola HT-820 stereo headphones and my Toyota Prius (hand free operation.) Signal strength/coverage was slightly better than the HTC Kaiser and the Touch Pro I recently reviewed -- but that only means a couple of feet, nothing major. The signal pairings were stable and static free. As mentioned in the Cellular section above, I did notice some volume variations however, between various callers on the phone, but none of that was detectable in extended use of the Stereo Headphones. Overall sound quailty was very good, and pairing with the WM6.1 enhancements to the BT stack was quick and easy.

WiFi

The 910c's integrated WiFi radio supports 802.11 b/g with WPA2 security. Generally, I found the sensitivity to be the same as other PDA phones and data transfer speeds were equivalent to what I've become accustomed to. The 910c quickly attached to my home network and was easily able to find the local networks operating within my office building.

GPS

The GPS radio provided is a Qualcom chip with an integrated antenna. As shown in the pictures above, HP also provides a jack in the top of the unit if you wish to attach an external GPS antenna. To be honest, though, I don't think you're going to need it. In my testing around my office and locale, I found the GPS to be very sensitive and able to establish a TTFF (Time to First Fix) within about 20 to 30 seconds from a soft reset. That's not quite as sensitive as the Pharos units I've tested, but definitely better sensitivity and lock stability than the HTC Kaiser and Touch Pro.

As mentioned above, Google Maps works very well with the imbedded GPS receiver, getting a fix quickly and keeping a lock through sometimes very difficult locations (in between buildings, etc.). Unfortunately, I don't have an unlimited data plan available so using Google Maps for turn-by-turn navigation is not an option. Unfortunate as well was the fact that my current navigation software OnCourseNavigator 8 (aka iGo8) also doesn't work on the 910c. The developer, NavNGo says they're working on it.... Sorry, I don't have maps for TomTom, so I couldn't give that a try, but I imagine it will work just fine.

Battery

HP has provided a very hefty 1940mAh battery for the 910c which should easily be able to stand up to the specified 250 hrs standby and 7.5 hrs talk time. It takes quite a while for the battery to get to the fully charged state (i.e. the charging LED changes from orange to green), but it shows 100% charge after about 4 hours from a dead state. For very heavy users, an extended 3200 mAh battery is also available, with a new back to handle the extended bulge of the battery. In my daily use, even though I'm not what would be considered a heavy user, I rarely was able to get the battery below about 50% during the day.

In Jason's unboxing article, some concern was expressed in the comments about the battery getting hot and rendering the unit unusable. My experience was that the battery did get warm when WiFi and GPS were on for extended periods of time, but it certainly not anywhere near uncomfortable or concerning.

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