HP iPaq rx5900 Travel Companion
Hewlett-Packard’s HP iPAQ rx5900 Travel Companion is a really nifty tool to take on a trip. The Travel Companion is a Windows Mobile 5.0 PDA with built-in GPS and, in North America, personal navigation software and maps from TomTom NV. It also comes with a kit for temporarily mounting the unit in a car.
Garmin, Navman, and others have each tried their hand at making a combination PDA/navigation device, but most of these products wound up feeling like PDAs with GPS functionality thrown in as a bonus. Now HP, in partnership with TomTom, is giving it a shot, and the result is the best hybrid yet. With a 3.5-inch touchscreen, enough memory out of the box to store all the maps you need, and a friendly user interface, the iPAQ rx5900 Travel Companion feels first and foremost like a GPS device, one that delivers extra value by delivering all of the things you would expect from a top-notch Pocket PC.
The 5900 seems sleek and feather light after PDA phones such as the Palm Treos. It measures 4.74 x 3.0 x 0.65 inches and weighs a mere 5.99 ounces. It has a very modern, minimalist look with simple low-rise control keys. The casing is molded and curved, made of high-impact plastic - very comfortable to hold. making it easily portable between your car and for use on foot. We really like its streamlined look and attractive silver casing and burnt-orange accents. In general, the device had a solid construction, but the glossy coating made it quite slippery in the hand.
The 3.5-inch, QVGA touch screen has a 240×320 pixel resolution and features an antiglare coating, which did a pretty decent job of keeping the display readable in direct sunlight, but colors tended to wash out a bit. As of this writing, HP will not offer a VGA model of the rx5900, which is shame since this type of device would really benefit from an extrasharp screen, but they did not rule it out for future Iterations of the rx5000 series. You can easily rotate the screen’s orientation four ways with the screen rotation button on the right spine.
In addition to this control, the right side also holds a power button, a small status LED (blinks blue for the wireless connections, amber for battery charge, and green for complete charge), and three more shortcut keys to the Quick Launch page, Navigation menu, and media player. All buttons are identified clearly by small icons, and they can be reprogrammed to open other apps.
The device is clearly meant to be used most of the time in landscape mode, which dictates positioning of controls?and orientation of logo, brand and product name on the front face. This is not the traditional way for a PDA, but it makes sense given that the Travel Companion’s defining application is turn-by-turn navigation which really requires landscape.
You can however quickly switch to portrait mode using one of the five keys on the Travel Companion’s right-hand edge. The button in the bottom corner is the power on/off. The others, at least by default, launch the TomTom application, launch Windows Media Player and move you backward through recently viewed screens. The microphone is also found on this surface.
To the right of the touch screen, there is a nine-way navigation pad that lets you scroll through the various menus and options and is great for panning in and out of maps. Pressing the center of the toggle also acts as an OK button. That said, we felt the directional keypad was a bit loose, so we didn’t always get the precise movements we wanted, and sometimes we had to press down on the control hard to get our commands to register.
On a brighter note, we were big fans of the two keys below it, which let you exit out of applications and access the Start menu with the press of one button. As a result you don’t always have to rely on the stylus, and one-handed operation is easier. We should note that the way the iPaq rx5900 is built and the orientation of the buttons makes it more comfortable to use in rx5900 landscape mode (horizontally) rather than portrait mode (vertically).
On the front face, there’s a four-way navigator with Select button to the right of the screen. I found the navigator a little loose, making it too easy to push the Select button when you mean to press left, right, up or down ?or press a direction key when you mean to press Select. I’m sure I could learn its idiosyncrasies in time. Below the navigator are two buttons, one that exits you from the currently displayed screen and another that displays the Start menu.
On the top edge, you’ll find the recessed reset button, a key that launches the audio notes recording applet?but does not actually start recording a note as some earlier Pocket PC implementations did?and the SD card slot. You might have to go hunting for the stylus. It’s tucked away at the bottom of the left-hand edge, flush with the rear surface. This is not a good place for it, unless you’re a southpaw. I was constantly groping to find it. The headphone, USB and GPS antenna ports are also on this surface in a recessed (but uncovered) compartment.
Overall, the rx5900 is easy to navigate thanks to its smart set of external controls and a feature called HP Quick Launch. This utility simplifies the interface by bringing together the five most essential functions of the device–Today, Entertainment, Navigation, Travel Assistant, and Internet–onto one screen, although we would prefer to see another option for the productivity tools.
There is a voice record button, a reset hole, and an SD/MMC card expansion slot on top of the unit, while the left spine has a port for attaching an external antenna for enhanced GPS reception, a mini USB connector, and a 3.5mm headset jack that accepts Walkman-style headphones. The stylus holder is located on the back, as is the rx5900’s speaker. One note about the stylus: its placement on the lower left backside makes it bit awkward to access for right-handed users, HP packages the iPaq rx5900 with a nice set of accessories, including a vehicle mount (windshield and dash), a USB cable, a power adapter, a car charger, a protective case, and reference material.
For HP, the GPS capabilities and the travel tools are the main focus of the HP iPaq rx5900 Travel Companion. The handheld is equipped with a SiRFstarIII GPS receiver and comes loaded with maps of North America and TomTom Navigator 6 software. As such, from a GPS standpoint, the rx5900 has a similar feel and look to TomTom’s stand-alone products. It supports text- and voice-guided driving directions (no text-to-speech functionality), automatic route recalculation, and a points-of-interest database. To get started, you enter your destination by address, city center, or intersection, then instruct the device to calculate directions based on a number of criteria, such as the quickest or shortest route, by avoiding toll roads, the required arrival time, and more.
There’s also an option to plan a walking route, which is great since the rx5900 is so portable. If at any time you want to avoid a part of your route, you can tap the Find Alternative icon, and the system will plot a new course. You can view maps in 2D or 3D mode. A status bar at the bottom of the screen displays useful information, such as the next instruction, remaining distance, and estimated time of arrival. There are also two icons in the upper right and left corners that let you zoom in and out of maps. You can add real-time traffic information, safety camera alerts, and other advanced nav features via TomTom’s subscription-based Plus services.
Running Windows Mobile 5.0 for Pocket PC, the Travel Companion was quick to power on and easy to set up. We had no problems installing the included software on our PC and synchronizing the iPAQ rx5900 with Outlook. The benefit of this functionality is that you can easily plan a trip using a contact in your address book.
Most of the device’s internal memory is dedicated to the preloaded TomTom software. The company’s much-beloved interface is here in its entirety, along with turn-by-turn spoken-word instructions that play over the speaker. As we expected, TomTom’s software worked wonderfully in combination with the powerful SiRFstar III antenna. We were able to quickly input our home location and navigate to different destinations in the Los Angeles area with very good accuracy. Our only beef was TomTom’s still slightly outdated POI database.
HP sweetens the deal for frequent travelers by bundling this iPAQ with MobiMate’s Worldmate Standard Edition software (a $34.95 value), which provides such real-time information as world clocks and weather forecasts for hundreds of cities in various time zones. Other travel-related functions of this app include a currency converter, a size and measurement conversion program, an area code database, and a packing list helper.
In addition to the navigation functions, the iPaq rx5900 includes a copy of WorldMate 2006 Standard Edition to help with your trip planning. The app provides you with some handy tools, such as current times around the world, international dialing codes, a packing list, and converters for currency, clothing size, and measurement. If you have a long flight ahead of you or you just need to relax, you can keep yourself entertained by listening to your favorite tunes or watching video clips with Windows Media Player 10 Mobile.
The player supports popular formats including WMA, MP3, and WMV. Plus, Windows Media Rights Management 10 gives you access to audio and video content from subscription services, such as MSN Music, Musicmatch, Napster to Go, and Wal-Mart Music Downloads. You can also view photos, and there’s a nifty app called HP Photosmart Mobile to help you create slide shows, share images via e-mail, and record voice notes with pictures. The handheld also comes with two preloaded games (Bubble Breaker and Solitaire).
The iPAQ rx5900 comes with a car dock and car charger, but you can always take it with you around town, thanks to the built-in 1700 mAh battery. When on, the GPS receiver will drain your battery quickly, however; the unit lasted about 90 minutes with the backlight on (pretty much necessary in any light).
Because it runs Windows Mobile 5.0, the Travel Companion is also a full-featured Pocket PC, complete with Wi-Fi connectivity (for surfing the Web and checking e-mail) and Bluetooth 2.0 (for synchronizing wirelessly or listening to your tunes using a set of wireless stereo headphones). The device quickly recognized and connected to our wireless network, and downloaded pages fast, thanks in part to the speedy 400-MHz Samsung processor.
With the Mobile version of Microsoft’s Office suite, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, you’ll be able to get some work done between trips—albeit without the aid of a QWERTY keyboard. The device has approximately 450MB of free flash memory for other programs and files, or you can use the top-mounted SD Card slot to add more capacity.
Besides work files, you can use that extra storage space for music, photos, or videos. The iPAQ rx5900 uses Windows Media Player 10 Mobile, so the iPod interface this is not. Still, we like that you can play DRM-protected WMA files purchased from various online music stores. HP leverages its digital photography background by including HP Photosmart Mobile, which turns the device into a digital photo album and allows you to create slideshows, record voice notes for pictures, and share your pictures with family and friends via e-mail.
For the road warrior, you can stay productive on the road, thanks to Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PC Edition, which includes the full Microsoft Office Mobile Suite. In addition to mobile versions of Word, Excel, Internet Explorer, and Outlook, the machine has a handy PowerPoint viewer; we were successfully able to open and view all three of the document types on the rx5900.
As far as memory, the unit has 64MB of SDRAM for running apps and a whopping 2GB of flash ROM. In addition, you have access to the SD expansion slot for more storage capacity. Though there’s no cellular wireless, the HP iPaq rx5900 Travel Companion is well connected with integrated Bluetooth 2.0 and Wi-Fi (802.11b/g), so you can connect to a variety of Bluetooth-enabled devices and make VoIP calls.
Tags: 240x320 pixel, antiglare coating, enough memory, glossy coating, GPS Device, GPS Device, hp ipaq rx5900, hp ipaq rx5900 travel companion, navigation device, navigation software, pda phones, personal navigationRelated posts
Posted on August 10th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: GPS Device
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