Customer Reviews

HP iPAQ HW6515 Mobile Messenger Unlocked Unlocked Bluetooth PDA Smartphone with Camera - FA385A

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

BASIC COMPARISONS (compared to the Blackberry and Treo):
These are only the basic DIFFERENCES between the latest Treo/Blackberry and the Ipaq hw6515

PROs
-Ipaq has built-in GPS receiver (not software!) the others do not
-Ipaq has two expansion slots (1 mini-SD and 1 SD slot), the others have one
-Ipaq has a 1.3 megapixel camera w/flash
-Ipaq has a terminal services client (allows me to remotely login to my cpu and control it)

CONs
-Ipaq does NOT have built-in WiFi (wireless internet card), the others do
-Ipaq comes with 64 MB of memory (ROM and RAM)
-Ipaq does not come with GPS software
-Ipaq battery life needs major improvements
-Ipaq doesn't support voice dial

NEUTRAL
-Ipaq uses Windows Mobile

One of the main reasons I chose this phone was that all of the CONs were addressable. I could get around the WiFi problem with a WiFi card for my SD slot and I could upgrade my memory by 1 GB with the mini-SD slot. If I didn't want a WiFi card, I could have gotten a 4 GB SD card and used the mini-SD for something else. As for the battery, I could buy another one and the GPS software I could buy as well.

COST
Main point here is that it costs more than just buying the phone.
1) $200 phone: I bought this through my phone carrier (Cingular) and renewed by 2-year plan. I bought it refurbished because I decided paying 400-500 for technology that is still in its infancy is quite ridiculous. When buying a pocket PC (ppc) you pay for much more than just the phone.
2) $32 1GB mini-SD card (Kingston): I bought this on Ebay. This included shipping and taxes.
3) $78 SD WiFi card (Spectec): I also bought this on Ebay. I bought the SDW-821. I bought this for two reasons:
- it supported both 802.11b and g
- it only stuck out of the SD slot aobut 5 mm. All other cards I found stuck out a couple cm.
4) $8 car charger. Bought this on ebay. The phone only comes with a wall charger and a cradle.
5) $150 GPS software (Navteq)
6) $8 extra battery
7) $50 Bluetooth (handsfree) headset MS850 - DO NOT GET THIS because the MS810+ series are the only Bluetooth headsets not supported by the hw6515. You can make calls fine, but the connection gets dropped on incoming calls.
Total: $528

This total was with a lot of bargain shopping. Be careful when buying on Ebay because there are a lot of people selling knockoff technology being shipped from factories in China that break after a couple weeks.

NOTES:
-I only pay 39.99/mo for my cell phone plan.
-I do not pay for internet usage fees because I use my WiFi card for internet access. There are free hotspots jumping up all over the place and hopefully Google gets their way and blankets the US with free wireless internet! I also have a T-mobile hotspot account for places that support this on my travels.
-If you get this and the GPS software you do NOT have to pay Cingular every time you use it. The GPS software and the GPS receiver work independently of Cingular so you never have to worry about getting billed extra by using this.
-Battery life for this phone given the technology is OK. I have to recharge once a night so long as I don't use BlueTooth or WiFi too often
-BlueTooth uses about 5% of my battery for every half hour I have it connected to my MS850 headset
-WiFi card uses about 10% of my battery for every half hour I am surfing the internet
-The Windows platform allows for very good multi-tasking
-I'm a UNIX/Linux fan but at least windows Mobile comes with Word/Excel so you can appease your mgmt team
-You can use .NET and Java apps (games and programs)
-Have to reboot the device on occasion because memory does not get freed up as it should
-After closing applications, they aren't actually closed, you have to shut them down in Memory->Running Programs
-Sound quality actually exceeded my expectations
-Bluetooth connections have been extremely stable
-I live in rural Northern California and have not had any problems with dropped calls or having bad reception. It seems to have the same reception as my Motorola V551.

I am just going to mention things as they come into my head. I am very happy with this unit. Good sound quality, both on regular and speaker phone. Speaker in moderatley loud. Screen is a bit small, I'd sacrific the tiny, tiny keyboard for a larger screen. The 312 mhz chip is noticably slower than my Dell Axim X5 but not an issue for me. Two very big pluses are built in GPS and TWO memory card slots. I have a GPS navigation system program that I use in my car and it's works very well. With the two slots, one is used for map data and other programs while the other is still free to add wifi for example. Yep, no wifi but the EDGE system is pretty good considering I am in New York. I surf the net for my business and even with Cingular's EDGE service, I find that it is equivilent to dial up at best. Battery life is adequate, with standby good for a few days but with the phone on, checking email and surfing the net expect only 3-4 hours. I really love that I don't have to carry my pda and a seperate phone now, but the holster that they provide is uncomfortable to wear at any angle. A cool thing is that you open the address book in outlook and tap on a number and poof, it starts to dial that contact. The handy flip up plate that covers the screen is a good way to keep facial oil off of the screen so viewing is clear. I bought an extra usb cable so that I can sync with my laptop and charge the phone at the same time, no need to cart around the cradle.

First off, I'd like to say that I love this phone. It is just amazing what this thing can do. I won't make this review too long, just some things I've noticed about it. I chose this phone because I wanted something that has a keyboard on it. I was debating between this one and something with a bigger screen. I'm still not sure if I'd rather have gotten something with a bigger screen, but the keyboard does make the task of typing a lot easier than using the on-screen keypad. It takes a little getting used to and a little practice to use the keyboard right, but I actually like it now. I also chose this over anything else, such as a Treo, BlackBerry, or DOPOD because of the big research and software available from HP and Microsoft.



First off, some things I don't like:
1.) Can not use voice dial. I'd like to be able to keep this phone on the side of my waist, then press a button on my blue-tooth headset, and speak the name of the person that I'd like to contact. Instead, I have to fumble with this thing to find the person I'd like to call.
2.) Camera is very very dark. In a well lit room indoors, the camera shows a VERY dark picture. You have to go outside with the sun directly on the subject to get a decent picture. I think it's the software, because I have seen it take pictures in dark areas that came out ok every now and then, just don't think it's adjusting the lighting very well.
3.) Low battery life. Not sure if much can be done about it, but when you're using this as a PDA, it doesn't last very long, maybe about 2~3 hours of continous use. If you just use it as a phone, it lasts a lot longer.
4.) Lack of built-in WiFi. Not such a big deal since I can plug the WiFi card into the SDIO slot, but would like it built in, like the 6715 and the upcoming 6940.
5.) Windows media seems to only be able to play .wmv encoded video, haven't been able to get it to play .mpg or .avi, but I guess you can't expect too much with a 316 MHz processor.

Some things I like about this phone.
1.) Windows Pocket PC 2003, nice OS in my opinion. Has Pocket Office and Word, along with a pocket PDF viewer, and bunch of other apps too.
2.) 3rd party support of Pocket PC apps is nice.
3.) GPS Navigation. I was used 3 different programs on here, MS Pocket Streets and Trips, iNav iGuidance (couldn't get this to work), and TomTom. Of the three, TomTom is the best. MS Pocket Streets and Trips works, but you have to do some manual configuration of the com-ports, and doesn't give directions.
4.) You can use Terminal Services Client! I can log on to my PC remotely and control it with my phone, simply amazing, as I do frequently administer my computer and network remotely, this makes it easy to do when I'm not by a regular computer.
5.) Email supports IMAP4 protocol.
6.) Can listen to streaming audio with Windows Media Player (as long as it is in Windows Media format, .asx file)
7.) Internet explorer. Although a lot of websites come out a bit skewed, and some sites I can't navigate because the phone doesn't really support JavaScript (not sure if it supports it at all). You can download the FlashPlayer as well and watch Flash Content.

Over all, I am pleased with this. It makes a nice phone with good sound quality and good reception. Great for bussiness or pleasure. Can be great for checking e-mail and communicating, or playing games, listening to music, and watching films. If you don't already have this phone and are not in a rush to get it, I'd probably wait til the 6940 comes out, unless the price of that will be much greater than this one. I don't have any regrets with this phone and have had a lot of fun with it.

The best about this phone is dual card slots, GPS, flip cover, and keypad. Most new GPS phones in the market now doesnt support SDIO SD card slot, they only support mini SD. Therefore this hw6515 has a great advantage over all other PDA phone. Wifi can be added with the new Spectec mini SD wifi card, which will save you the SDIO slot for adding extra storage or SDIO devices such as radio, scanner, etc.
The bad things about this phone are no wifi, 240x240 screen, and poor battery life (compare to other PDA phone, although hp released a extended battery of 1800mAh, the standard 1200mAh only support you about 1-2 days).
Quad band and GPS that makes it special among many other PDA phone in market now.

This is an office on the run. I can now head out on a business trip with just one device and effectively have all the electronics I need in one small package. I used to carry a cell phone, a PDA and/or laptop, and a GPS, plus all the associated cables and chargers when I was traveling. Now I take one device and have everything I need at my finger tips. My calendar, my contacts, favorite photos, some music, and always up to date email.

Pro's: A fantastic all in one device for business travel. The phone reception and function are much better than my Razr. The integrated functionality between the phone, pda and email is great. I have the iPAQ set up to send and recieve email via cellular. This is a huge help while traveling. The ability to send and receive email over my cellular service is much better than wi-fi or by syncing with a desktip. By the way, the 6900 series does have wi-fi. Web browsing is good over both wi-fi and GPRS and is even faster over EDGE. Windows mobile 5 has a very functional copy of IE. Having the GPS with me all the time is very useful. I am using Telenav by NavTec which downloads maps and business addresses over the cellular service. No need to download maps from a desktop PC. The reception of the GPS antenna is amazing. It works much better than my Garmin 60CS.

Things I would like to see HP improve: The camera is slow to boot and slow to take a picture. HP can do better here. Battery use is also a concern. When I am traveling on business my days are often 12 to 15 hours long and if I am using the GPS at all, the battery needs a boost sometime during the day to make it through. I purchased a slick little charger kit from Gomadic that makes this easier, but a longer lasting battery would be better. I was also a bit puzzled why PDA's come with 2.5mm audio jacks. Most mp3 players and all of the good headsets and ear buds have 3.5mm jacks.

If you need to have your calendar, contacts, phone, and email with you this is a very useful device to have. When you add the GPS on top of all of that it becomes a must-have device.

I have had mine for almost two years now. I decided that I only wnated to carry one item instead of two (phone & PDA). The first one I got was sent back within 6 months due to continuous reboots. There was a QC issue with it that caused the problem. 2nd has lasted for 1 1/2 years now and I will be discontinuing it's use when my plan expires here shortly.

Pro's:
Phone
Built in GPS
Sync's with Outlook
Expandability (have 3GB in SD's)
Internet

Con's:

Phone- difficult time with signal strength. I can be standing next to my wife and I will have 1-2 bars and she will have 4. Speaker is not loud enough for reasonable use. Also for some reason when you are driving it does not like to transfer to the next tower. It will hang on to the old one, with 1 bar, and I have had to reset it (using the stylus) to get it to latch on to the closest tower which will then give me 4 bars.

Battery- Battery does not last for anything in this... especially if you are using bluetooth. For playing solitaire or listening to MP3's it really eats up the power quickly.

Internet- I got this through Cingular. Pay $30 per month for the data service. So slow that I consider it barely useful. About 5 minutes to open the yahoo mobile page. Very sad.

GPS- Yes it works but barely. Have to download a file every two days or so or it will take all day to find the satellites. Also does not update that quickly and is off a bit when using it with a map program.

Other- Has a tendecy to reboot a lot. Of course this is probably the Microsoft OS on the device. For one thing if you click the X to close a program is does not really close- just runs in the background.

Bottom line is that this unit does everything, but it doesn't do anything very well.

First of all, I wanted to give 3.5 stars but it did not let me pick 1/2 star.

This is my 3rd PDA phone. I had Treo and Siemens before this one.
All PDA phones I had share one common (and big) problem.. It crashes.. When the operating system crashes, you miss all your phone calls.. Most of the time, you don't even know it crashed.. So you might have missed all those important phone calls that you were waiting for. I first thought that it was pocketPC OS issue. However, HP had a ROM upgrade that came out that was newer than the one I got. So I downloaded it and upgraded the ROM and it seems to be a lot more stable.

I got the unlocked version and I am using it on T-mobile network. Call quality is very good. The keyboard is a bit small and is hard to type with one hand. Speak phone is pretty good. Built in camera is useful but a bit slow.. and the video quality is not so great.

GPS:
One thing that it stands out is that it has built-in GPS.
I bought a golfGPS software and I can use this phone to figure out how far I am to the pin. However, the battery dies so quick I can only use it for about 11 holes.. I tried some navigation software (street atlas and MS pocketMap) and it is okay.. but not great.. unless you pay a lot of money and get high-end GPS software.

One thing I would recommend people who buys this is to get data plan.
I have T-zone ($7/month, not the full data plan) and it makes this phone
so much better. I can use googlemap and find locations, businesses..etc.
I can use mapquest and google search. I can also access my e-mails and latest news. If you get the full data access, it would be a lot faster.
but even with my t-zone (and it's slow), it's not bad..

It has a square screen and some of the older software do not support square screen so if you are planning to use an older software, you may run into some problems..

Overall, it's not bad.. but nothing wow about it..
I would probably wait until they come out with something better (especially if you are going to spend over $350 for a phone).

I absolutely love this phone ... without it and all it's functions I feel completely lost. I love the calender that sends me reminders when something important comes up. I really like the windows functions and the fact that it synchronises with my desktop, BUT ... it is so temperamental! It switches off without a reason when I need it most and often doesn't reboot automatically. I've been stuck, needing it to work desperately and it will not switch back on, even when I do a soft reset. Only when I get home and can place it on the cradle, does it resume activities. This is most frustrating. I have had it fixed twice and still I have problems with it. If this glitch could be sorted out, I'd give the phone a 5-star rating!