Customer Reviews

HP iPaq 510 Voice Messenger Unlocked Smartphone with Wi-Fi, MicroSD Slot - Unlocked Phone - US Warranty - Black

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I've had a variety of phones, but this is my favorite.

Razr - Thin & light, but brain-dead synchronization with Outlook.
Cingular 8125 - Does everything, but big, heavy and some tasks needed the stylus.

My requirements:

- Quadband (world phone - works almost everywhere)
- Bluetooth (for headsets etc)
- WiFi (to connect to the Internet for faster surfing and places like Japan where Quadband doesn't work)
- Perfect synchronization with Microsoft Outlook
- Keypad (T9 - don't text enough for a full keyboard)
- No stylus needed
- Don't care about 3rd party software, but it's nice

The phone: The HP iPaq 510!

It fits my requirements great! And the Voice Commander software is pretty neat (some may think it's gimmicky, but it helps when you're driving a car).

Only minor niggles - wish it was even thinner (but the upside is HP put in a hefty batter) - keys require getting used to as kinda smaller (but hey, you got a big gorgeous display above them). Some people have complained about the screen not having higher resolution, but I find it fine (170x220).

With a little customization, this phone can be tailored to you! I changed the Shortcut keys, installed SmartphoneNotes (to sync Notes with Outlook), recorded some voice tags to improve the speech recognition (it actually can recognize speech without training, if necessary!) It will even switch from Normal to Silent (or Vibrate) mode whenever you're in a meeting! Sweet!

Note: Press and hold the Home key to get quick access to other function!

Love this phone already!

I bought this phone because it has Windows Mobile 6 which is compatible with Microsoft Sharepoint which my company is integrating soon. Also it has Wifi. These two features alone puts other phones in this class at the $500+ range.
First Impression-
When I opened the box today, I was surprised to see how small the phone was. Nice big screen and the keypad are on the small side, but its fine once you get used to it (after a few texts and emails) I must also say that compared to my last phone (Samsung Blackjack) this phone is much lighter and not as wide as the blackjack... so it fits comfortably and weightlessly into my front shirt pocket. It also sports a mini sd card for music and COMES WITH 3.5 mm standard headphones... This was one thing that bothered me about the Blackjack (only special samsung port headphones or wireless bluetooth headphones would work).

The only downside but one feature that I had to sacrifice in order to gain other features (Windows Mobile 6 and WIFI) is that this phone has no 3G. Surfing the net, it was quite noticeable. However, it is not a big deal if you are only going to use it for email. Edge network is fine for text related websites. Therefore as a work phone, this is perfect as far as features go. Out of the box, the battery life is splendid, I have not charged it like they told me to, I'm going to wait till the phone dies before I do that.. Hope it doesn't mess anything up.

Bottom line-
For $300 this phone is packed full of features that you can only get with phones $500+ I highly recommend this phone to anyone who wants Windows Mobile 6 and WIFI, and doesn't mind the regular 3 letter per button typing style... I'm sure for most of us, we are still used to that style anyways.
I will buy 2 more for my employees.

This is one of thos situations where you are looking for certain features and hoping one day they will all be found in one device. If you are saying this about a Smartphone, then this is the one.

An unlocked Wi-Fi, WM6 phone with the little 'fixes' to quirks and inconveniences in the WM5 operating system cannot be beat. It offers so many little things that people have been waiting out of a Smartphone and Windows Mobile, you simply have to check out the specifications yourself.

And thankfully, the functionality and ease of use works well, and I don't have to reset it and things like that. It is very well refined and a great finished product. I couldn't be more thankful for it.

The only thing I wish it had is a separate power button that would put the device on Standby...I've only had mine a few days, so maybe there is a way to actually do this with some button sequence. But I not only got what I thought I was getting when shopping for it and researching it, but I was pleasantly surprised with other unlisted upgrades and tweaks that have made this one far above any other Smartphone out there.

I don't think you will be disappointed if this is what you are looking for. God bless you.

I'm no cell phone afficianado, so I don't have religion about the gizmos. I was looking for something that would allow me to get rid of my separate Palm PDA (I'm so sick of handwriting recognition...) and T-Mobile prepaid phone (I don't talk much, so 100 bucks for 1000 minutes good for a year is absolutely perfect) in a compact package that wouldn't threaten to tear my shirt pocket off. I've had the iPAQ 510 about a week as a refurb from eBay, and I love it.

The positives are that it is incredibly small, weighs half as much as other Windows Mobile devices, has a huge amount of functinality for the price, and allows me to use WiFi for comms since I don't have a data plan. The negatives are that the keys are small, the input of text isn't quick or easy, the navigation isn't slick, and a certain percentage of the third-party applications don't work-- it's not a touch screen which knocks out some apps, and I guess others error out on installation because of the smaller screen. I definitely see why some people love it and others don't-- somebody used to a full-sized Windows Mobile device would have to reconcile themselves to a lot of compromises, but I feel so liberated by not having to tote around a huge device.

I've been using it with open source Funambol and the my.funambol.com portal for wireless synchronization with Thunderbird since I don't have Outlook. I have Portable Thunderbird on a USB key, so I can take my PIM software wherever to do most of the data entry for the device. So far it has been great.

I've read of a lot of people having problems with recognizing MicroSD cards and Wifi cutouts on the 510, but I have had no problems. The 2GB Kingston MicroSD card I bought here has worked flawlessly (but slow as molasses writing through ActiveSync and WMP-- better in a card reader, but MicroSD just seems slow). *** When I first got the phone I immediately updated with the ROM from the HP web site, and I suspect this could be important. Do this first because it wipes out all your data. ***

The Hp Ipaque 510 is a mid range product with enhanced voice capabilities. The resolution of the camera is a bit of a turn off at 1.3 megapixels and the the phone can be really irritating at times when it doesnt act as expected when you try to enter some voice commands. Overall though, it is a good phone since it has a range of features such as windows mobile six, microsoft mobile office (with word which supports edit mode), windows media player and up to 2Gig storage on a mini-sd card.

Positives:

There are many positive things I can say about the HP iPaq 510. I brought this phone on my recent trip to Vietnam, where I would buy a prepaid SIM card, loading 30 minutes to it, and the phone just worked as expected. There are many unlocked GSM phones out there, but I'm still glad I bought this HP phone because of these three reasons:

First, the HP iPaq 510 is light, compact, and it looks pretty cool. To other people, especially those overseas, the phone could appear more expensive than what you've actually paid for it.

Second, it has Windows Mobile, which comes with many extra and useful applications, such as Task List, Calendar, Internet Explorer, and games. The phone also supports Bluetooth and wireless Interent. Using the phone, I can surf the Web at hotels, shops, and airports, wherever there's an open Wi-Fi connection. It's just like I'm carrying a small and convenient pocket PC with me that can make phone calls all around the world, wherever I go.

Finally, this phone supports Skype, so once you download the Skype client to the phone, you can make phone calls over Skype wherever there's a Wi-Fi connection.

When I'm back to the U.S., since I've already been under a contract with a CDMA cell phone company, I can't use this phone as my main phone. To make this phone be continually useful, I bought and installed a prepaid SIM card from T-Mobile, and turned it to my car phone. This phone now handles my occasional phone calls in my car, while waiting for my next overseas trip.

In general, this iPaq phone is useful for me everywhere, anytime. I would recommend it.

Negatives:

Occasionally, the phone freezes up at boot up and shutdown time, forcing me to take out the battery and put it back to force a reset. Windows Mobile, the OS that operates this phone, apparently still retains the Windows' trademark of unreliability from time to time. I hope future firmware or OS updates will fix this annoying problem.

Since the phone's keypad is not covered, just like any other uncovered keypad phones, when you're not using it, and storing it in your pants pocket (or purse or handbag), you should lock the keypad, by pressing and holding the "Talk" (blue phone icon) key. If you don't do it, it's very likely you will dial out inadvertently. The problem here is the phone's documentation doesn't mention about how to lock the phone, nor does it recommend it (while it should have). That's another negative which I hope HP will take note, and that's why this phone won't get 5 stars from me.

This is my first smartphone. May be someone could say that I have no experience enough to give a good review. Anyway, here I go!!
I am a computer enthusiast and I was looking for a mobile that could let me browse the internet via wi-fi to check my e-mail inbox and keep me in touch with my friends and I found this small bar of Technology.
The first thing I did was to buy an antivirus for smartphones and it is running smoothly.
The first time I used this to chat on msn messenger I figured that it would be a little embarrasing because this mobile has no QWERTY keyboard but guess what, I didn't need the keyboard at all. I just began to speak and I was amazed with the voice messenger feature. I sent some pictures at once and a short video and all that was for free via an internet wi-fi hotspot.
About browsing internet i found it has a good speed.
About the memory slot I tryed first with a 4Gb micro SD and It work good, but the battery drains too fast, then I changed to a 2Gb and it is working perfect, Now the battery lasts almost 5.5 days browsing, making phone calls and listening to music.
The Size vs Features ratio on this model is simply awesome.

This is a nice product, it has everything you need... (except if you are looking for a GPS phone or a touch screen) The combined contacts are very useful, you can have all the information for a contact including MSN Messenger information and you can check either they are on line or not. Camera resolution is fine and video quality is OK. Send messages and take voice notes are very powerful tools. Sending IM voice messages is my favorite action because the keypad is a bit little and it's sometimes difficult to write if you have big fingers. There are some missing tools that it should have but you can download and install them. However I think that they should be there so they are very important tolls such as "cut, copy, paste", or "connection manager" This is a huge negative point so it is very important to have the option to finish an active connection (GPRS or EDGE) and the only way I have found to do this is to restart my device and this is not nice. It finishes by itself only sometimes but mostly I have to restart even if I go to the task manager and kill the process using the connection, it remains active. I have read a comment saying "this device has no good earpiece volume" OMG it comes with a medium volume set by default and if you just adjust it you'll hear nicely ;-) Voice commands are nice, you can do almost anything on your phone using voice commands but sometimes it doesn't understand what you said and you have to repeat (that or I have a misunderstandable voice lol) The internet calling feature is wonderful (VoIP) so I can call using internet and not my provider service and I save a lot of money calling another VoIP contacts and even international phonecalls.

However I am very happy with this phone, it has everything I need Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Dialup, VPN, VoIP, GPRS, EDGE, standard MiniUSB PC connection, Camera, Office Mobile (Word, Excel & PowerPoint viewer), E-mail (I have 3 mail account configured on my device including Hotmail and Yahoo! and it works perfect), Windows Live Messenger and Mail, it has no a compression tool for files such as a ZipManager but I have downloaded and installed a one that does the work, so it is not a problem to me. This phone has shortcuts everywhere to resume your tasks and this feature for "Automatic Profile" is perfect so it auto switches from Normal profile to Vibrate profile when you are on a meeting or an appointment and switches back when your meeting finishes. I recommend installing a Birthday Manager "NSBirthday" which reads the birth date from your contact list and it shows you days left for their birthday, horoscope info, age and day of week for their birthday.
Resuming; I higly recommend this phone so it has everything a business person needs to be in touch with his/her contacts, tasks and joy. Igoring that is a very cheap phone considering what it has inside.
I hope this has been useful to you.

After using this extremely smart phone for a month. It continues to amaze me, everyday I'm discovering a cool new function. The functionality is superb. Crystal clear reception and has not dropped a single call. Finally the engineering staff and designers put themselves in the shoes of the everyday user. Great job HP. This phone is loaded with amazing tech features. So far I am extremely pleased with my purchase. Peter J Vrouhas

Works great for the price. No problems with it. Does fine internationally with different SIM cards.

It's part of the long link between a normal cell phone and a "smartphone"....painful to text with the numeric pad, but runs Windows.

Good value for the money.