Other than the bundled software
you will find iPAQ extras as usual. With this device comes a bonus
utility to format iPAQ file store, which is the extra non-volatile
ROM memory space available for the user.
Just like the other new iPAQs,
the h4150 also has the ClearType feature, and it also offers ClearType
Tuner for fine-tuning the text for the best appearance that suits
you.
Audio features are superb, there
are many Audio control options. You can set headphones volume level
separately and apply a software equalizer. You can adjust the bass
and treble separately. The microphone sensitivity can be adjusted
with different modes for short-range recording, normal mode and
conference recording that is highest sensitivity. The standard
3.5 mm jack for audio output is another plus for the h4150 compared
with the h19xx series where you have to use an adaptor. Some people
might not like the placement of the loudspeaker behind the D-Pad,
but it offers an acceptable sound quality. I don’t see myself
using my Pocket PC to play MP3 files without headphones. The built-in
loudspeaker is mainly good for notifications.
iPAQ bundles a powerful backup
application, which the same one developed by Sprite
Software. You shouldn’t be surprised that hp included
this utility because it is truly the best backup utility available
in the market. It shows that HP recognizes the importance of securing
your data especially for enterprise users. Using iPAQ Backup you
can specify what type of data you want to back up such as my documents,
email, personal databases and system data. You can create self-resorting
backup files. You can schedule your backups to start automatically.
Using the battery monitoring feature it will prompt to backup at
a specified battery level (Threshold %). You can enable automatic
PIM backup as well. When you start the backups process it completes
in just few seconds. It is really fast. Restoring also is very
simple.
This device comes with iPAQ Image Zone that is a
replacement for iPAQ Image Viewer. iPAQ Image Zone can be easily
used with a new interface which I find it user friendly. You can
send an image by e-mail or to another device or you can print it
to an infrared printer using iPAQ printing utility. There are many
features including adding sound to pictures or a slide show, adding
comments, etc…
Just like other iPAQs the h4150 come also with “Self
Test” feature. It can help to detect if there were any errors
with the device. It can record the results of the test in a log
file.
The Performance
Utilizing SPB Benchmark from SPB
Software House, I compared similar devices on a common testing
software platform. I excluded benchmarks that dealt with ActiveSync
and SD Card memory speeds. Because ActiveSync speeds are directly
dependent on how many USB devices you have in the chain, if you
have USB 1.1 or USB 2.0, and how fast your particular PC is.
SD/CF memory speed tests imbed the speed of the SD/CF card itself.
Testing was done with a fresh unit after a hard reset, with only
SPB Benchmark loaded in Main Memory. The results were then taken
from the unit, and compared utilizing SPB Benchmark's visualize
capability. Anything you see in red denotes that the particular
unit won that specific test.
Overall the h4150 performed very
well compared with other devices. From the results you can see
that this device is one of the fastest Pocket PCs available in
the market. The following is a graphical presentation of the above
benchmark tests including a brief description:
Spb Benchmark index
Spb Benchmark index reflects the
overall performance of your Pocket PC hardware. It depends on hardware
design of the Pocket PC device, taking into account the performance
of CPU, memory, file and video systems.
CPU index
CPU index reflects the performance
of your Pocket PC processor. Both integer and floating-point calculations
performance is taken into account.
File system index
File system index reflects the
performance of the internal file system of your Pocket PC device.
It is not affected by storage card speed or by total amount of
memory installed on your device, only the speed of file manipulations
is taken into account.
Graphics index
This index reflects the performance
of your Pocket PC's video subsystem.
Platform index
Platform index reflects the overall
performance of the operating system running on your Pocket PC.
It mainly depends on performance of the operating system itself,
performance of file manipulations and built-in applications such
as Pocket Word or Pocket Internet Explorer.
Next I will talk about battery performance, I will
show pictures to compare this device with iPAQ h5450 and i-mate
Pocket PC Phone, then I will discuss wireless capabilities for
both Wifi and Bluetooth, and a final conclusion.
