HP iPAQ H6300 Pocket PC

It's a very neat compact unit, feeling weighty in the hand and nicely put together. The hand-writing recognition is surprisingly good and noticeably improved on earlier versions. The screen gives an excellent image. Unlike earlier models, the backlit screen is just that, so you don't get the glaring edge-illumination of other models that can be annoying to others.

It comes with a USB cradle to re-charge and connect to your PC. Setting up the PC & iPaq for synchronisation was very straightforward. In addition to emails, calendar etc, you can also get it to synchronise key files as well, so if you are working on an important document, you can take it with you, edit it while you're watching the TV, and then automatically synchronise with your PC when you get back to your desk.

It is very important that you backup (and recharge) this device regularly using the cradle. It is prone to scrubbing your files and applications (see below) and no back-up means no restoring your files.

The battery life is sometimes great, sometimes poor. You need to remember to turn off the various wireless connections, since GPRS & WiFi in particular seem to drain the power a bit fast. It would have been nice for it to intelligently realise you were no longer using the connections and auto-disconnect. If you can, get into the habit of storing this in its cradle so it is always charged.

I've combined the iPaq with TomTom 3 Navigator, and find it makes a truly excellent in-car navigation system. Having said that, I would probably go for the cheaper wired-version not Bluetooth if I was buying again. Bluetooth gives you more mobility & flexibility, but it can have trouble connecting sometimes and since you'll probably want a power wire to the GPS unit anyway, you're not reducing the clutter by going for wireless.

Problems with the 6340:
- crashes a lot - twice a day is typical.
- surprisingly slow, although this isn't always intrusive
- seems to spontaneously discharge batteries if left unattended (and off) for a few weeks. This will lose all your data, files and applications (other than those preloaded with the device). This drives me completely mad and is, I believe, an appalling slack bit of design. Get with it guys, we don't like to lose all our data just because you can't be bothered to use non-volatile memory.

If you do lose your files and need to restore, when you place the iPaq in the cradle you need to select the 'Guest' option. Also you will need to set the Regional Settings to what you had before (eg set language to UK English and time-zone to GMT) otherwise it won't restore (yeh thanks HP - took me a while to figure that one out). Once you've done that, it will restore ok.

Overall though, it is a beautiful unit with superb functionality. I love it for its flexibility and versatility. I hate it for its instability and trickiness to get all the wizardry working well. It's the Alpha Romeo of the PC world - beautifully designed but more temperamental than a teenage tearaway from Tuscany. Still, on balance I'm a fan. It's no mean feat to cram a very good PDA, mini PC, telephone, e-mailer and web-browser into something about the size of a pad of Post-Its. Be prepared for a bit of hate, but don't be surprised to fall in love with this flawed beauty.


Ipaq HP6340   July 14, 2005
Stubey (London)
7 out of 9 found this review helpful

I was looking at in car navigation systems and for the same money you can have a device thats far more flexable and is a phone to. I have tomtom go navigation on it and its wild!!!
Left the pda on all just for phone calls and the main battery still was at 80%. Using the phone gets a bit of getting used to and Voice activated dialing would be a useful feature.
Only supports wifif spec 1108 B so if your in a G only spot youve got problems!!

Apart from that well worth it the complete comms solution
and a nice size screen to. Will still go in your pocket!!


Slow. Tends to hang. Forget about headsets. But still.   January 15, 2005
56 out of 59 found this review helpful

Notice that this phone has one of the slowest processors in today's HP productline. So sometimes, you'll feel that this device is just simply slow. Other times, you'll notice that it crashes. When it does, and you reset it, it sometimes "forgets" to load the SD card. There goes another reset. Then it just recovers, and picks everything up. Voice quality when using headsets (wired or bluetooth) is horrible on the receiving end. Well, they still can hear, but nowhere near the direct way quality.
But still.
I love this phone. It just knows everything. Finally. Wifi, bluetooth, gprs, gsm, you name it. And it can do multiple connections at once. Takes huge SD cards (supports the gigabyte ones too). I use both the phone and the wifi parts extensively, bluetooth often. The battery for me lasts for about 3 days. Not bad at all. The UI is standard Windows, nothing new there. The contact list function is cool, one can initiate an SMS, an email, a voice call, anything with a single tap. The backup function works as expected, very useful feature.
In spite of the expectation, the phone is actually not heavy, and very easy to get used to. It starts up quickly after a reset, and establishing connection to the GSM provider is very quick. Brighness, colours, everything of course customizable.
Some firmware update would probably help the lots of crashes, and the storage card issues. Maybe even the headset problems. Wouldn't take too much for HP to perfect this phone. Which is otherwise the perfect tool for those who phone, email, sms, browse, and go to meetings a lot. I guess there's quite a few of us.