so I’m giving the whole “information appliance convergence” thing and have thusly bought one of these (the h6315 to be exact). after playing with it for a few days I’m left with an overwhelming uncaring feeling about the whole idea - it’s great that I can sync it with my computer and have real data on the screen that’s easier to get to than it is on a standard cell phone, but on the other hand I keep hitting the start menu and firing up things if I talk on it without the headset. the iPaq has a great hand presence (better than my Axim x50, even) but it’s just too goddamned big for a cellphone. I’ll do a better writeup on it once I get a little more time with it. I have two weeks to screw with it.
basically, in the day I’ve had it, I do really like the always-on internet connectivity. when wifi is not present it’ll fall back to GPRS. and, as far as it goes, it’s pretty fast - the processor on it is a TI OMAP 168MHz model, which pales in comparison to the 520MHz XScale in my Axim, but I really can’t tell the difference. IE is slower. sync (through PocketMac, not Active Sync - don’t have a PC right now to try it with) is ungodly slow but that may just be pocketmac. (for some reason it’s way faster over BT.) connectivity rocks, as it has GSM/GPRS, 802.11b and bluetooth 1 built in. the thumboard is nice but the keys are chicklet-style and hard to type with as there are very noticeable gaps in between. it’s hard to dial using the touchscreen. I love being able to hook it into the tape adapter in my car (which I usually use for my iPod) and being able to field calls through my car stereo. sound quality is awesome - it’s the first time I’ve had a headset that I could understand the other person on fully, and I finally have a GSM phone that beats the CDMA Cellular South free phones I’ve had. that said, I bought it yesterday, and I’m resetting it and exchanging it today since the wifi doesn’t work at home (which uses 40-bit WEP - mainly to keep casual people out, natch, and not for security). I’m, however, still up in the air about full-sized PDA phones, and am not convinced yet that they’re a good idea. I need to check the return policy at expansys and see if I can try out some i-mate models (the i-mate Jam PDA phone and i-mate SP3 smartphone) and maybe the Symbian-based Sendo X. the Jam lacks 802.11 but it does have an SDIO slot, and it’s evidently quite a bit smaller than the iPaq (around the size of the Motorola MPx220, which is somewhat bigger but not amazingly so than my V180 that I hate with a passion). (FWIW, built-in wifi is a pain in the ass when it’s on, you’re driving, and you’re trying to make a call - every few seconds it wants to know which of the myriad wifi networks that are around you at any given point in time connect to the internet. and no, the h6315 doesn’t have that cool dial-by-voice-command feature the i-mate PDA2K/audiovox somethingorother has.)
as an aside, a few cool things about OS X: Cmd+Ctrl+D while you hover over a word brings up a dictionary panel for quick lookups of definitions (found through Daring Fireball). I like right-click spell check/google/dictionarying and being able to click icons in the Task Switcher thing (Cmd+Tab). also, car repairs are expensive.