HP iPAQ 614 review
March 13th, 2008
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How long have I waited, like lots of you, to get hold on the iPAQ 614c? Will it live up the expectations that I have for an all round Sat Nav, phone, PDA? Well today it arrived thanks to Clove Technology who have kindly provided the review unit.
Introduction
Firstly I would like to apologise if the review shows a slight bias, as I am looking to buy one of these units, and therefore may, inadvertently, look at it in a slightly different light. I will try and take off those rose tinted glasses, and be as objective as I can.
After approximately a 6 months wait, here it is, I have been plaguing Matt almost daily for up-to-date news of its release, now it’s here, he can rest easy, until the Asus P750 gets close again. Anyway!

As it has now arrived, it does appear to be readily available almost everywhere in the UK and Europe, but there is still the issue of it being withdrawn from US sales probably due to the chipset, as previously mentioned, "Due to recent legal issues between suppliers of mobile phone technologies, HP have decided not to offer the iPAQ 610 Business Navigator to U.S. customers as previously planned."
What's in the box?
The box itself is a mind of information, as you open the lid, there you will find the Quick setup guide, and guide showing you what all the buttons do. There is also the setup disc which easily lets you set your device up, assigning speed dial, email accounts, preferences etc. Again very helpful, on starting up the device there are loads of hints and tips sections as well as the usual automated network, email set up procedures, it is recommended that the set up CD is used. The one thing that grabbed my attention is a sticker on the device itself that states ‘cracked screens due to improper handling are not covered under warranty. Do not compress, hit, bend or drop your HP iPAQ. Remove your HP iPAQ from pants pockets before sitting down. Always store your HP iPAQ in its protective case’. Alas, however, no free screen saver or protective case that I could find.
Included in the box is a USB type connector and charger, there is a plug socket with adaptors of different regions around the world. There are the usual manuals and also the important start up disc. Mini usb connecting headphones.
See Matt's HP iPAQ 614c unboxing video for more details.
HP iPAQ 614 Specification:
General
First impressions; I think ‘chunky’ would sum it up. The dimensions are on the larger size of what I am used to. It is comparable with the Eten x800 at roughly the same width and depth, and slightly longer at 117 opposed to the Eten’s 114mm. It does feel big to hold and is a little on the heavy side, having said that I have been using an Asus P526 while I have been waiting for this release, and that is a full 30g lighter, so the 614 would feel heavy in comparisson. Tytn II users will find it lighter, though bigger.
The rubberised back sits comfortably in the hand, whereas the front has been mentioned as appearing ‘plastic’. Although the buttons are a shiny black plastic, I quite like them. (take the glasses off!). It has to be said that I find it slightly too big for day to day use and using for any length of time it does start to get uncomfortable, I found that the edges of the casing did not help at all in this area.
On the Front of the device you will find the 2.8in Touchscreen, the 20 button keypad (no QWERTY), and 2 'softkeys'. The softkeys by default are set to messaging and HP Shortcuts.

HP shortcuts opens up a new page of customisable menus set up as 0. Google Maps, 1. IE, 2. Contacts 3. Calendar 4. Set Alarm 5. Wndows media 6. HP asset viewer 7. Calculator 8. Messaging 9. Games. These menus correspond with the keypad numerical buttons and allow quick access to each relevant program.
Within the blue backlit Keypad is also is housed the ‘virtual wheel’ or as HP call it ‘the Smart-touch navigation wheel’ which replaces any D-pad, this is very responsive and useful for scrolling etc. I personally ended up turning it off as I kept catching it when I was using the keys, good idea and stops the usual dust magnets in the form of trackballs etc. but it's not for me.
The other keys on the left side of the numerical pad are from the top, the phone dial button, a Window start key, OK button, and the portrait/landscape button, this is a very welcome addition as I use Sat Nav a lot and prefer to have it in landscape mode, yet prefer to use the PDA portrait. On the right side of the keypad are buttons to hang up the phone, Clear, Enter, and the Power on/off.
The left side of the unit holds another OK button, underneath which is a 3 way thumb wheel, up/down and push, and under that is HP’s voice commander button.

On the right side of the Ipaq is the camera button.

The top of the phone holds a strange but useful mute button, which switches the phone to vibrate and cuts off keypad, phone sound and notifications. Strange only in that I have not come across one of these before and at the top of the unit and so long as you remember to use it and not the on screen icons it's a nice idea. You also have to remember that this is NOT the power button!!

At the bottom of the device there is the normal Mini USB and reset button; as well to the left is the lanyard hole.

The back is home to the 3.0 mega pixel camera as this is the 614c unit, the 614 does not come with a camera. Also there a small mirror of self-portrait photos and a flash and finally a speaker grille. At the base of the back is the battery release button and the telescopic stylus housing, which for me is on the wrong side as I am right handed it seems somehow awkward, but I am getting used to it.
Highlights
Lowlights
REVIEW
You can forgive quite a lot of the minor issues already mentioned because the device does zip along quite happily with most if not all the programs it uses. There is no navigation software to give a comparison at this time, and the GPS did not work initially it was showing as present but disabled, with no apparent method of switching it on. This was resolved with a quick phone call to HP and the advice is to take the Phone out for a drive for about an hour and that should sort it. Oddly it did, and Google maps worked absolutely fine and again fast and responsive.
The 614 has assisted GPS which seems to be quite misunderstood at the moment. So let me just clear up how this seems to work on the 614. You do not need to be continuously connected to the network in order for the GPS to work, in fact most of the time when I was testing the GPS I didn't even have a SIM card installed. What the 614 will do though is connect to the internet and download updated Ephemris data once every few days. This 'assists' the GPS chipset establish a quick fix. In practice this seems to work quite well and a fix is established quite rapidly.
The other issue I had was with the network connections; I think that the problem is that there are so many ways to connect, via 3G, GRPS, EDGE and WiFi that sometimes the phone struggles to decide which is the best method. You can see the connection flicking between, 3G and GPRS or Edge. On my unit on 3G it drops the phone signal, and then when it loses the 3G it has to connect back to the network again and it will only do this via a soft reset. When browsing the web with the 3G symbol on, the phone would not work until I had logged off and reset the phone. Following day the same thing, connected to 3G and this cut off the phone connection altogether, then 3G signal dropped and there was still no phone, drove for 2 hours without realising that the phone was off. I would be interested if anyone else has encountered this problem, and what the fix is.

Telephone functionality was fine past the connection issues call had no issues with clarity and handsfree /Bluetooth where equally functional and there is HP audio to allow you to adjust the Bass and treble on the device, as well as switching on and off the AGC, automatic gain control on the mic. There was a question regarding VOIP, this would apparently need to be done via a third party, there is no obvious software installed.
As mentioned the screensaver is a nice addition that I have not seen before, this shuts the iPAQ down when left alone for a set period and then scrolls through your Pictures on a never ending rotation, so if you have any of ‘those’ photos don’t store them in the ‘My Pictures’ file.
For me this is the first time I have come across the xt9 SIP which works well but is rather small for the likes of me and my fingers. The ‘it doesn’t really matter where you touch’ system works well bringing up loads of suggested words based on the touches you have made, the scroll wheel works really well here. Texting with one hand is definitely possible although due to the size I found myself holding the Ipaq with 1 hand and texting with the other.
Also to be noted is that the casing of the iPAQ around the screen is slightly deep which means when trying to scroll or tap right into the corners you are slightly hampered and occasionally need the dreaded stylus. But on the whole I have found that it is rarely used due to the keypad, wheel, jog etc. which is nice.
Camera is adequate, and the autofocus works well, Controls are hidden in the key pad itself the 4x digital zoom being operated by number 6 for in and 4 for out, also there is number’s 2 and 8 to control brightness. Also included is the HP photosmart photo, this allows you to upload your photos once taken directly on to your Snapfish online account via email.

A 1590 mAh Battery – Could be better in my experience a full day would just about do it, a few calls (6 maybe 7, of no real length, 20 minutes tops), wifi off and Bluetooth on that would be your lot, recharge needed at 8.30pm. Day 2 no real use at all Wifi and Bluetooth off, no phone calls, very little application use and the battery was good for just under 38 hours standby . I have seen reports of 2 days plus on standby, so it could be this battery.

Software
As mentioned we are using Window Mobile 6 Professional, which in itself is relatively unremarkable, albeit snappy, the 520MHz processor and the 128M doing SDRAM are their job competently, and without any of the lag that I have heard talk of.
Extras included are the aforementioned HP shortcuts, HP iPAQ Tips, Clear vue PDF which I found a pain to use and even with the faster processor spent most of the time reloading the page, remote desktop access, setup assistant which again is useful but is loaded from the start up CD on a desktop, windows live is included also. It is also preloaded with Google Maps, which worked superbly and again very fast and clear. Included in the settings section there is also HP Asset Viewer that keeps all your device info in one place, such as personal user information, memory details, ROM details, and all the other relevant parts of the phone system info, camera info and connection details. Noted in here is the GPS which is the Qualcomm 6280. Finally in the Connections section is the HP DataConnect which automatically configures the device data settings to your chosen network.
Within the menus itself, there is the usual WM6 programmes, plus keyboard settings allowing you to lengthen the time the backlight stays on the keypad, and also the ability to turn off the scroll wheel and keyboard functions.
Voice commander was fun and one of the better ones that I have used before, although due to my cold not that accurate all the time, asking it machine to carry out all kinds of tasks and even dictating, audio emails, dialling speed dial, read email, find contacts, check appointments, create memos and so on, all with the spoken word, without have the tedious task of assigning a voice tag to all of your contacts in the first place.
HP Enterprise Mobility Agent - available to configure and manage the iPaq OTA (Over The Air) allowing the user to configure, download and install applications on the iPaq, although this has to be activated and set up via your works IT manager. Yet more applications is the HP Broadband Connect allowing you to connect your computer to the internet through the iPaq allowing high speed data transfer, again the getting started CD is a must here to load the application on to your computer in the first place.
Another piece of software that I have not come across before is a TTY setting that can be found in the Phone settings, designed for the deaf or hard of hearing, a good explanation can be found here http://www.abouttty.com/Whatis.html
Conclusion
Was it worth the wait and will I be buying one? Personally I am disappointed with the size, which, don’t get me wrong is not massive by any means, but is still too big for me. It has a lot of nice features as mentioned above, and I think with more regular use and additions of Third Party software add-ons to suit each individual would make this unit very capable and an asset to use for an all-rounder. It has my preference of the keypad instead of the QWERTY and/or Touchscreen alone and is very responsive which ever you choose to use for input.
For me I want to get a look at the Asus P750, before I spend my hard earned. At around £350 and with the current £50 cash back apparently available, maybe the niggles with each device may swing it the iPAQ‘s way after all. Although from what I can gather the Asus price has not be set for definite. I’m not saying I will be buying and if it was this against the Orbit 2/ HTC Polaris there would be no contest for me, 614c every time purely for the keypad, one day perhaps we will have the perfect phone?
Review by: Steve
[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Tracy & Matt, iPAQ, HP, 614c]
Comments, Pingbacks:
If you have a 3G connection and the phone loses the connection, it will not automatically downgrade to GPRS, it will simply stop working as a telephone until it has been soft reset.
Surely this renders the 614C compeltely useless as a mobile telephone - which is after all its no 1 task.
Asus P750 looking favourite again - ho hum.
The downfall of the P750 is the 64MB of RAM which is a bit low :/
Both the 614c and P750 had the oppotunity to be amazing devices, but each lacks at very important palces in my opinion.. Too bad, really.
Also, could you provide some more photos taken with the device, especially of some text from a book or magazine?
connection. The only way to get it back is to do a soft
reset. Usually when this happnes the phone signal looks
good but I cant make a call.
I do not have 3G as I am on Tmobile in the US. It must be
moving between edge and GPRS. It does not happen a lot but
it needs to be fixed.
so as i can see till now,the problems are a phone connection problem and camera quality problem.
both could be fixed by a software update from HP,so lets wait and see how good is hp support ,when the fix gonna come??
till now i am gonna stay with ma asus p525 since :
the camera quality is better then hp 614c.
same cpu intel pxa270.
almost same size.
p525 missing gps and 128 ram (no problem with 64 ram ,never had low memory ,or speed lag).
so i am gonna wait for the upcomming wave of ppcs ,since none of the devices convince me yet .
great plog matt and tracy .
Mark - Thanks for the comments
Terry - you have got it right on my review, I have contatced HP support re: connection and I am waiting...update as and when.
PPX-Doc - as above HP support should be in touch?
I am reviewing the Samsung i780 at the moment, well worth a look, review shortly.
Matt
(or the Mio A702) appear in the meantime HP might have lost a sale.
It's not a risk worth taking (before the end of March) for the sake of a £50 cashback
THe screen is not is nice on the mio but the camera is better. I have not done a side by side yet but i prefer the ipaq. I found that if you have a problem with the data, just use the comm manager to turn the phone off then trun it back on and everything is fine.
Mio has no 3g only edge. It is a tad smaller and lighter but not as solid feeling. The dial pad is unusual with the *0# keys not at the bottom but to the right of the 3,6,9 keys.
I can't seem to find this information anywhere and I want to order a memory card :(
Does it have to be MicroSD or can it be MicroSDHC ?
Thanks in advance for any info.
I am using the 614c with a 8GB Sandisk SDHD card. No problems.
Do you actually mean SDHD or was it a typing error and you mean SDHC as shown in the image linked below ?
http://www.happybirthdaytoyou.com/buymemorycards/8gbmicrosde.jpg
As far as I know, SDHD is a typing error, and they actually mean SDHC (SD High Capacity), which support capacities of 4GB or more. The one linked to above is correct, an 8GB class 4 microSDHC card, and will work in the iPAQ 614c.
So far I'm loving this device, only a few minor bugs, hopefully a ROM update will fix those.
Any idea if/when HP are likely to release an update for this phone? Where will this show up?
What ROM versions are people running at the moment? My splash screen upon booting says OS-V1.00 and FW-v0.77. Are these what everyone else is running?
I can confirm that my ROM versions are exactly the same as yours.
1. It picks up only GPRS in my city, while the service provides gives both GPRS and EDGE. However, when i roam, it pick up EDGE - service providers in both cities are the same.
2. Poor battery life - i can't seem to get one day without anxious looks at the battery life - and i am a medium user, maybe about an hour, max two on the phone.
3. Bluetooth issues - most probably a software patch will fix it later in the day - Outgoings on bluetooth are fine. However, If you pick an incoming call, you need to remember to pick it using the button on the bluetooth device, else the bluetooth will not work - quite irritating acutually...
I do have a problem though ( and this was before installing the memory card ) , the battery life is hopeless , when I went to bed it was on 40% , I left it switched "off" at the side of the bed and 6 hours later it said "replace or charge battery".
HP have said to do a factory reset !
Also what has happened to IPAQ Backup that was on my h6340 , I can't find it on the 614c :(
Will new versions of the model, with videotelephony?
Can you confirm if the Smart touch navigation key allows you to select the application you navigate to?
In phones with D pad you can press the joystick to select, does the the smart touch wheel allow the same?
thanks
I think you have to use the enter key to the right of the smart touch navigation but not sure as the manual is crap
Steve
[the battery life is hopeless , when I went to bed it was on 40% , I left it switched "off" at the side of the bed and 6 hours later it said "replace or charge battery"]
I have found out what caused this , on my old h6340 when you put the unit to standby using the power button wifi was turned off.
On the 614c when you press the power button to put the unit to standy wifi remains active and drains the battery in less than 2 hours.
This means if you mostly use the unit on wifi as I do you have to keep switching it off and on again in wireless manager rather than simply pressing the power key.
I have been using the Ipaq 514C, and one of the problems i had was with its alarm which doesn't work once you switch the phone off. Has this been rectified on the 614?
piece of kit. Much better than the ETEN product I had before.
Super fast, reliable and have had none of the 3G switching
problems mentioned here. TT6 working fine also.
Good work HP
New to the site but have read some reviews and it is a great
site.
In Australia, the 612c (The Aussie Version of the 600 series)
they still havent arrived yet as of 25th March as hp said
sometime in march!!! I have already preordered and paid
for my 612 and i think i will be getting it sometime in
april.
I dont think HP are going to be working with Inventec again
with their ipaq manufacturing and design with all of their
delay; total let down.
In question to the last post, Gary Jenkins, This whole
network switching thing. Gary, have to tried to make a call
or open an active data connection to see if it switches?
from what ive heard network switching with the ipaq 600
has all kinds of problems only when your in an active
voice or data call/connection
The 3G thing/network connection issue is a pain. I was convinced there would be a firmware release or something to sort this out, but the HP site has no software available as yet.
Being as it has so much phone functionality, that does bascially render the phone not fit for use - and is really unacceptable for HP to release it as a phone in this state in my mind. When I loose signal, probably twice daily due to the phone detecting and connecting to 3G, it takes resets and all sorts, and in some cases a hard (battery out)reset to get a signal back. Not good. The battery life is appaling if you dare to use any of the features so that needs sorting, and also my favourite feature - having connected the device by usb to my PC - and it does a sync using active sync, the device retains the ip connection it used over usb through your pc - and that then prevents it from using acive sync over any GPRS or other air signal to sync your email etc using Exchange for example - until .. guess what. You do a soft reset.
It seems that this device will spend most of its time resetting.
The scroll wheel is pointless, since you can't really use it when you intend to use the keyboard (it goes mad selecting thngs otherwise!)
Plus points
after you install some of the available optional software like spbplus etc, you do get some useful features like a proper 'close' button that will actually close an app and not leave it in standby eating all your battery life, and smart scroll - very ipod touch like scrolling whcih works well in web browsing, but is a shame it doesn't work in other apps like contacts etc so save you having to grasp the little sony style scroller on the side, use the pointless scroll wheel or have to get yoour nail down the side of the screen :-)
I have'n had an issue with the camera, in fact I think the quality is pretty good suffice to say I have used it to take some pretty good pics, and more recently in fact to take some of some equipment that needed to be good quality in order to make some documentation.
Power button is in the wrong place though.. espcially when typing and then going for the space bar.. you will now and then turn the device screen off, and when you turn it back on, the message has been closed. Normally its in drafts , which involves some browsing though message folders to get back to where you left off!
Yet another annoyance is the small memory. I like others prefer a personal ring tone to some contacts. In order to do that I added some from the 2gb memory card I have installed by simply ticking the boxes and pressing add in 'ringtones' What I didn't know is that this makes a copy of whatever file you are using and moves it to the local memory, in the ringtones folder. I was wondering why I ran out of memory until I discovered some mp3's in there!
Regards the screen saver, it doesn't really matter where you put photos for it, or what ones are in My Pictures as you can set the screen saver to use any folder contents you want. So as long as you keep the ones of you and your partner that you snapped over the weekend in a seperate folder, you can have what you want on the phone and not worry about the screen saver displaying for all to see
Roundup
Its a good device - so far as the ipaq side. Clearly Hp sat around a table and decided that they ought to add some features everyone else has (Ipod, sony etc) and these have basically not worked out.
Its a rubbish phone, at this point, so if you are relying on it as one, don't get one yet. Ther will be a new 800 series device out I believe and there has to be some software upgrades for this otherwise as a business phone its just not useable - discovering your phone has been off for several hours is a joke!
Personally I wouldn't buy one over the Samsung 700/800 devices, or even the new iphone that will have GPRS and be push email friendly when it arrives.
You have a Mobile
You have GPS
You have Pocket PC
THE LOT
Camera and much more , Ive been reading so many reviews on the phone and yes they are mixed but ive had mine for 5 days and Ive just to day worked out and get tomtom 6 working with poi . Ive been waiting for this for some time as Ive been using a Nokia N80 since it came out - and from new i had the amazing HP ipaq 4700hx pocket pc. Still kicks ass that pc , -
Ok so lots a little things you were used to with the old hp ipaq have changed. Some for the worse , some for good -
Good points
You don't have to do back ups. Your data gets stored on the rom not like my old ipaq where the bat goes totally dead you have lost all unless you do scheduled back ups.
You can run tomtom sat nav with its Built in gps -
Ive not experienced any problems with battery either - Come on lets face it it you can the hell out of it its going be dead in 4 hours - Course that's how lithium works. But what you need to do with these things is tweak it a little . Set low brightness on the screen - Set it to go off after so many mins. - You wont lose any calls, or texts.
The podcast downloading works great , The WI fi works great so i can just upload my pics to my facebook and clips to youtube - thanks to a little app called shouzu.
You can run loads of apps on this ,
Bad points , Chargers broke already.... But really So far i dont have any but give it a week i might have some now i have the sat nav working . More to follow .
But really i would get this phone if you are on the move doing appts on the road . Dont worry about bat power - In car charger . The is well worth that extra mile to replace other gadets.
Yet again another good job HP.
Thanks
Bulsteruk
Ive missed loads on this phone and features what are not mentioned in some reviews. I will cover them in time as i feel they are important to many users like myself.
sorry for missed words, Im just excited . lol
The main problem is the phone connectivity. Like many others, I have had problems with the phone switching to 3G then failing to find other connections when I move out of a 3G area. this makes the phone pretty much useless. If HP were to fix this bug, it would be a great device.
Battery life is also an issue. It lasts a day if I do not use the device much.
A handy unit overall
i was having similar issues with phone connectivity. I would have 1 bar of HSDPA signal,... download speeds would be extremely fast as well as web browsing.
I could receive phone calls fine. However,... ocasionally i would find i couldnt make a call ! BUG
A fix must be issued.
i have got round this problem by manually selecting my network to switch back to GSM or GPRS but i shouldnt have to do this.
This should be the best device on the market but its not quite there just yet.
The HCI is great but the software and OS needs to catch up.
Waiting for a patch or another ROM.
A`m deciding between Asus P750 and iPAQ 614c and I also own a iPAQ 514.
My question is this: does anyone know how the screen resolution is a factor in this case for those who use Remote Desktop or watch a lot of movies with TCPMP.
If I understand correctly the screen size is about the same but each pixel in P750 is half smaller than in 614c.
Is this to be considered, because I see just two other downsides in Asus. Only 3,6 Mb/s HSDPA and a smaller memory.
Does Remote Desktop comes preinstalled on both devices?
I am certain that they (HP) will put first ROM update very soon as it was for 514.
In the Asset Viewer it will always show as "Disabled" unless you are trying to use it.
If you go into Google Maps and select the option to use GPS Position, it should automatically try and find your position using the GPS. This may take several minutes for the first time and you should be outside for this. You could use any GPS program for this, such as Tom Tom, as long as it is configured correctly to use the GPS, such as in Tom Tom it uses "Other NMEA GPS Receiver" on COM 8 at 115200 BAUD.
During this process, if you return to Asset Viewer, it should show the GPS as "Enabled", as this happens automatically when an application starts using the GPS.
Thank you all for your valuable information given on this site. I have two issues now at the moment that I haven' found a solution yet.
1) When two connections are established at the same time for example WI-FI and GPRS(EDGE), which one is actually used by Ipaq while downloading data? Are there any priorities for types of connections? If so how is it? I hope WI-FI has higher priority over the other connection types so I won't worry about quota exceeding for data transmission.
2) I created an e-mail account on the device and named it, say ACCOUNT. After I synchronized my e-mail with the laptop I recognized that an account with the name OUTLOOK E-MAIL is created and the content of the inbox folder on the laptop is transferred successfully to the inbox of OUTLOOK E-MAIL. However, the inbox of my account ACCOUNT is empty. I can not perform send&receive with OUTLOOK E-MAIL, but I can do that with ACCOUNT. How can I manage to transfer the e-mail to my valid account ACCOUNT? Any help?
Thanks in advance
i have a windows mobile 6.0
the network problem that it had
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