hp iPAQ h6340 - Pocket PC PDA review

I’ve been an advocate of the PDA pretty much since its inception. I’ve had everything from a Psion Organiser, to a US Robotics Pilot, to a Compaq iPAQ travelling around with me over the years, and during that time I’ve seen the PDA evolve significantly.

These days a PDA can no longer be a glorified Filofax, because that kind of functionality can be found in just about any mobile phone. No, in the modern age, the PDA has to pack a pretty decent amount of functionality into a sexy body if it has any hope of gracing the pocket of a style/techno junkie.

The PDA has evolved in many areas, including the incorporation of large, colour screens, memory card slots and audio/video playback. However, the most important evolutionary advancement for the PDA has to be connectivity.

Early PDAs relied on infrared ports for connectivity, and I can still remember Palm basing an entire advertising campaign around the ability to beam contacts from one device to another. The next step was the integration of Bluetooth, which allowed a PDA to communicate with a similarly equipped mobile phone – this potentially put your email in your pocket, but of course you still had to make sure you had a Bluetooth phone with you as well. Next up was the introduction of integrated WiFi, which for me at least, represented a milestone, and convinced me to put my money on the table and buy an iPAQ h5450.

But now, the communication bar has been raised again with the release of the hp iPAQ h6340. Not only does this latest iPAQ incorporate Bluetooth and WiFi, it also has built-in GSM/GPRS functionality. So, what you’re getting here is a “one device does all” scenario – something that, in theory at least, makes a lot of sense.

Let me start off by saying that I wasn’t particularly keen on the h6340 when it landed on my desk. I wasn’t sure that I wanted a single device that did everything, because, as the unit in front of me highlighted, the result would be a reasonably large and unattractive solution – with dimensions of 119 x 75 x 18.7mm (HxWxD) and a weight of 190g, you definitely know when this device is in your pocket. However, as I started to get acquainted with the h6340, I didn’t just warm to it, I found myself starting to love it.

OK, so the h6340 doesn’t look quite as slim and stylish as some PDAs – especially some other iPAQ PDAs. But once I got past the fact that the chassis was plastic, rather than the familiar iPAQ metal, I accepted that the h6340 isn’t a bad looking device. If there’s one thing that really spoils the looks, it’s the massive aerial stuck on the top left corner, but I have to assume that this is a necessity for the plethora of connectivity options at your disposal. Also, it’s not surprising that this unit isn’t as slim as some of the other iPAQs, since it has a lot more functionality squeezed into it.

If you look at the base specs of the h6340, you might become a little concerned. For a start, the CPU that drives it is a Texas Instruments chip running at a very conservative 168MHz. Considering that the last Pocket PC we looked at (the Dell Axim X30) was based on a CPU running at 624MHz, you might worry about the h6340’s horse power. However, I can’t say that I found the h6340 to be particularly sluggish, and I’d rather have a slower processor with more supporting functionality anyway. The problem with the PDA market is that it has become a numbers game – manufacturers are just throwing faster processors or more memory at their devices in an attempt to entice buyers. With this in mind, hp should be commended for deciding to design something different, rather than just plonking a faster chip in an aging device.