HP iPAQ hw6965

Speaking of memory, the hw6965 comes with 64MB of RAM, and 45MB of flash ROM. Expansion is handled by a miniSD memory card slot that’s hot-swappable. The memory card slot is on the right side, easily accessible, unlike the E61’s slot which is under the battery cover.

Network connectivity is almost fully covered in the hw6965. The phone is a quad-band GSM phone with support for GPRS and EDGE. There is no 3G, which is probably the only thing missing here. Personal connectivity is handled by Bluetooth, which is still at v1.2 without any support for stereo, WiFi, which is also stuck at 802.11b, Infrared and USB.

New in the hw6965 is the built-in GPS receiver, but while it may work well in places like the US, it’s performance in India is debatable. It can take upto 10 minutes to get the signal, and that too when you’re standing out there in the open. Overall, we weren’t satisfied with the GPS functionality of this phone, at least in India.

Multimedia
The phone comes with Windows Media Player 10 that plays back all your standard MP3 and WMA files and also video. The only issue is that the stereo jack, which is inconveniently located on the bottom of the phone, is of the 2.5mm variety. Given the size of the phone, a more standard 3.5mm stereo jack would have made it instantly compatible with existing headphones and audio equipment without the need for adapters, but hey, at least it’s not a proprietory connector like the E61. Other than media playback, the hw6965 also has a built-in voice recorder.

The hw6965 also comes with a 1.3 megapixel digital camera along with an LED flash. The quality of the camera is below par—the colors came out all de-saturated and washed out, the black levels are really low and there’s excessive grain even in fairly well light day time conditions.

The camera is also extremely slow, taking up to 2-3 seconds to save the image and get ready for the next shot. The HP PhotoSmart-branded camera application generates image names like HP cameras (HPIM0014 etc.).