HP iPAQ 910 Business Messenger

The HP iPAQ 910 Business Messenger started shipping in July 2008 as an unlocked GSM phone rather than with a carrier in the U.S. In the past, AT&T has carried the iPAQ line, but there's no word that they'll pick this one up. The 910 retails for $499 and is available online direct from HP and from retailers that carry HP mobile products and phones.


The 5.4-ounce 910 is a bit thicker than the BlackJack II, thinner yet slightly heavier than the Treo 800w, and narrower than the Motorola Q9h. It is pleasingly compact and significantly thinner than QWERTY side-sliders like the AT&T Tilt. If you love the size and design of the BlackJack II and Moto Q9 but want a touch screen, the 910 is your answer.


It has a jogwheel on the upper right edge with an OK button just below along with a standard D-pad. There are buttons for voice dialing, the camera, and volume on the sides, with the power button on top. The standard mini-USB jack and microSD card slot are located on the left side under rugged rubber doors. The camera lens, LED flash, self-portrait mirror, and speakerphone are on the back with the large battery door below. The SIM card lives under the battery.


It's easy to smart-dial, speed-dial, open the Start Menu, check e-mail, use Internet Explorer, and close windows with one hand. Though the 320 x 240 landscape display is small by WM Professional standards at 2.46", it isn't too small for link tapping or reading text, and it's bright. 


Phone, reception, and data


The 910 is a quad-band unlocked GSM/EDGE phone that also has worldwide 3G UMTS and HSDPA bands. It has the newer and faster 7.2 Mbps HSDPA spec, which provides quick Web page loads and fast e-mail downloads. The phone runs a convenient wizard that sets up data and MMS when a new SIM is inserted.


Reception is good, and is in line with the BlackJack II but not quite as good as the Moto Q9 and Tilt on AT&T. The 910 will drop down to EDGE if the 3G signal isn't at least moderately good. By default, the 910 is set to automatically select bands, but you can override this and set it to GSM or UMTS as you see fit.


Call quality and volume were decent, making it loud enough for a somewhat noisy environment like a restaurant. If you're in a busy mall or at a ball game, opt for a headset. The speakerphone is located on the phone's back and the volume is below average, though sound quality is good with little distortion. 


The 910 has the usual suite of call features including smart dialing, speed dial, call waiting, and conference calling. HP includes Cyberon's Voice Commander 2.5.1, a good speech recognition and command system that doesn't require voice tags and supports voice dialing over Bluetooth, along with launching applications, checking appointments, and composing audio voice mail messages.


Performance and multimedia


The 910 is no slouch in the performance department thanks to ample memory, the speedier Windows Mobile 6.1 OS, and a 416 MHz XScale processor, and there's little lag in opening the Start menu, accessing the programs folder, and scrolling. At startup, it has 73.68 MB of free RAM to run programs—plenty for several memory-hungry applications to run concurrently. There are 123.7 MB free for storage, plus a 24 MB iPAQ Filestore. While both main internal storage and the Filestore will survive a complete battery drain, only the Filestore will survive a hard reset. There is also a microSD card slot that accepts standard and SDHC microSD cards.


The iPAQ has the usual Windows Media Player Mobile for music and video playback. The phone can play MP3, WMA, and AAC music files along with ASF, WMV, and MPEG files. MP4 files can only be played with third-party players like CorePlayer Mobile and TCPMP, which performed well in our tests.