HP iPAQ h6315 review from United States of America

Had to return the unit two weeks after I got it - it would drop reception completely, and require a reboot to re-acquire reception. I have had the new unit for 3 months now, and no problems getting reception.

The large screen is easy to scratch, so I would recommend picking up screen protectors as soon as possible. I bought an aluminum case for mine that protects the screen.

The unit does require a reboot almost daily, but its strengths definitely make up for this minor inconvenience.

As most other people note about their phones in general, the screen is illegible in direct sunlight. I'm glad I work in an office.

When using the device as a phone, it is not very intuitive. If you want to make a call, in most cases you will need to pull out the stylus and tap the screen a few times to place a call.

Something that is a curse and a blessing at the same time is the processor. It has a 168MHz processor, which can be slow at times, but it also gives it good battery life compared to other smartphones.

It runs Windows Mobile 2003 for Smartphones, which inherently makes it quirky.

The phone aspect of the device is adequate. It works good enough for me, but if you need one-handed operation, this is probably not for you. The standard ringtones are boring, and you cannot download new ones (easily). You have to re-encode an audio file, and place it in the ringtones directory for use as a ringtone.

It has an integrated Secure Digital card reader. At this time, you can get a 1GB card for about $70. On this card, you can store just about anything. I've put MP3s, documents, maps, and even videos on a card. I rarely find a need for more storage.

For an MP3 player, it works very well. One feature that no other smartphone has is a full 3.5mm headphone jack. This allows you to plug in whatever headphone you want to, without the need for any adapters. I know there are plenty of other portable mp3 players out there with more storage, but if you think about it, you can fit almost 200 songs on a 1GB SD Card.

Taking the audio option further, I bought a pair of HP Bluetooth Headphones, and paired them with this device. Now, I can have my phone in my pocket and listen to the music through my wireless headphones, without the hassle of snagging a cord. The headphones have buttons on the side of them for play/pause, next/previous track, and volume up/down. Once again, these work great with the HP, and don't require much fiddling with.

Next use I have found for the device is a video player. The screen is 320x240 pixels, and betaplayer works well with the lacking processor. Video playback won't work with the bluetooth headphones, because the processor can only do so much. I have watched many videos of all kinds on the device - I've watched 2-hour movies (~400mb) on it and still had 55% battery remaining.

The device does have integrated 802.11b wifi, and I have heard that it is possible to use Skype on it, but I have not tried it yet.

As a web browser, it is slightly less than adequate. The only data connection it can do is GPRS (through t-mobile), which gets a maximum throughput of 80KBps. When you consider how many websites use graphics-heavy design, it's not so good in this area. If you need high-speed data, Verizon offers their Audiovox XV6600 with EV-DO.

You can automate the device to automatically pick up e-mail every few minutes, and it will connect/disconnect nicely. T-Mobile has an all-you-can-eat data plan for $20, which makes this easy to do without racking up charges.

It comes with a snap-on keyboard, which is a nice gesture on HP's part, but not very useful to me.

A camera in a phone is alright, as long as you're not going to court a lot. I could never get it to take good pictures, despite the fact that it has digital zoom and auto/manual exposure compensation.

In all, I bought a phone that also acts as an mp3 player and a video player. When you think of all the other devices it replaces, it is a very good deal.