Powerful handhelds

What resolution are you looking for and what is the maximum size a handheld can be?

Edit: So I am current thinking of the EEE PC (maybe a bit too large?) or the Nokia N800 and N810 series.

Yeah, the EEE PC is a tad too large. I'm thinking no bigger than a eyeglass case.

The Nokia N810 that you mentioned looks cool, but the product page lists the price as "out of stock".

Couldn't you just grab one from Newegg?

the main problem with these sorts of machines is the keyboard is ass

there was an exception however, unfortunately the company went bellyup

i used to have one of these
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_5
brilliant machine until it broke, decent keyboard/screen

if someone came out with a 2008 version (color+higher res + faster cpu with video acceleration etc) ild grab one in a sec

There are a lot of "UMPC" style PCs out there now, notable ones include the OQO and Samsung Q1/Q2.

If you're looking for a Nokia N810, you might also want to look for its older sibling, the Nokia 770. There are a ton on eBay. The Mylo is the most commonly cited competitor to the Nokia models, but it doesn't have the benefit of being based on Maemo, so I don't think independent app development is feasible or possible.

Check out this list of UMPC-likes.

Personally, when it comes to portable computation, I am a humongous sucker for the Newton MessagePad 2100; sadly, Jobs didn't see it and axed the program when he took the reins back at Apple. It would be difficult to find not only parts, but development tools and port adaptors, even with a dedicated community around the device. It won't suit your needs, however -- there is no colour display.

You might want to look at an older Toshiba Libretto, but they are hard to find and dog slow by modern standards.

If you're just showing off pictures, you could always buy a PSP. It even has a "camera" mode for retrieving photos from digicams over USB.

Well, I tried out my PSP this last week, and it is almost there. The picture viewer is very nice, and the added functionallity of the music player and other stuff is cool. The browser does flash plugins, but most of the sites that are small enough to load into the limited memory are pretty craptastic anyway. I haven't been able to get youtube to work, as it doesn't recognize that the browser is capable of javascript (though it is). I'm also a little concerned that the platform is about to be dropped, it just doesn't seem like Sony is all gung-ho about it anymore.<br><br>I have the original PSP, which is a little bulky. Maybe the Slim is better, but if I'm going to buy a new device I'd like to have something better.

yeah dammit, where is the actual gadgetry of the future? It seems like all this crap being sold now is just over-analyzed safe-bet feature-ridden mediocrity. That's the real price of capitalism. Different cubes all polished into spheres.

seriously

The HP iPaq 210 might be just the device I'm looking for. Check out these specs:

-802.11 b/g WiFi with WPA2 security, Integrated Bluetooth v2.0 with EDR
-Marvell PXA310 624 MHz processor
-Windows Mobile 6 (.NET CF baby, yeah. Though if you wanted, you could install Linux or NetBSD)
-4" transflective TFT 65K color 480 x 640 pixel (VGA) touch panel display with LED backlight
-128 MB SDRAM main memory for running applications, 256 MB flash ROM (usually application memory and storage are shared)
-24 pin docking connector, mini USB, Compact Flash and SDIO (high-capacity) (the CF and SD slots are supposed to support up to 32GB each. Aich Eee Double Hockey Sticks, 64GB of storage is a lot for such a device)

The first article claims that it has USB host capability, it's just waiting for an appropriate connector. If it gets that, there is practically no limit to its expandability.

I really like the design (i.e. build quality, keyboard, 1280x768 8.9" screen, large hard-drive) of the HP 2133 Mini-Note. But I don't like the performance with it's VIA CPU/GPU.

If they offer an Intel-based alternative with better performance, longer battery life and less overheating/fan noise, I might just be very interested in getting one with Windows XP on it. Maybe, heh. HP did promise to consider using other CPUs after 6 months~ since its release, so *figers crossed*.

I think something based on the Atom platform would be pretty good for this, mostly because it has nice performance for very little power, it'll be nice when mobile phones get in on this, hopefully the PocketPC type phones will then start to get better battery life [wink]

The meizu M8 is something I am keeping my eye out for. It's not out yet and probably wont be until end of this year or sometime next year :S

So, I bought the iPaq 211. It should arrive in 4 days. I'll be posting a full review whenever it does.

Quote:

Original post by capn_midnight So, I bought the iPaq 211. It should arrive in 4 days. I'll be posting a full review whenever it does.

That's pretty nice. How much did it cost you?

Quote:

Original post by Ravuya Quote: Original post by capn_midnight So, I bought the iPaq 211. It should arrive in 4 days. I'll be posting a full review whenever it does. That's pretty nice. How much did it cost you?

$370 from a Buy-It-Now auction on eBay with free shipping. A pretty good deal considering the free auctions were ending at $380 with $15 shipping.

So the iPaq 211 is in my hands now. It's a little bigger than I expected. I thought my old Dell Axim X51v was large, this is even bigger. In the sleave, it is the same width and depth as a PSP, and about an inch shorter.

The screen is HUUUUUUGE. 640x480, with 4" diaganol view area and a very, very bright backlight. The touch screen is a tad "tougher" than what I'm used to for a PDA, but I think I actually prefer it this way, even though it is taking a little while to get used to. Basically, I find myself having to press buttons a little harder than I first expect to. I think this might turn out to be a good thing, as I remember times where I accidentally brushed buttons on some of my older PDA only to send the device into a tailspin of activity.

There are 4 function buttons, with seperate events for single clicking versus holding. All of the buttons take effort to depress, but they do with a satisfying "click". The extra effort is not that much, and again, it feels more reassuring that buttons won't accidentally get hit rather than feeling annoying.

In the middle of the function buttons is a directional jog with a center selector button. This is the first center selector button that I have been able to easily use without accidentally bumping the directional jog. For example, on my cell phone I end up having to deliberately use my thumbnail on the center selector button, and usually only after I reallized I have accidentally hit the right-arrow.

There is a record button on the side that sits flush with the case. It is perhaps the only annoying button on the device. I find it nearly impossible to hit the button with the pad of my thumb while holding the device. I have to hold it in one hand and hit the record button with my thumbnail. I rarely use the record feature anyway, so this isn't likely to be a major buggaboo.

In addition to the proprietary 24-pin connector, there is a mini-USB jack. They seem to work almost identically, as I can sync and charge over both of them. That's handy, because I typically like to leave my 24-pin connector connected to my main PC at home, and I have tons of mini-USB cables that I carry around with me for all kinds of devices. I'd like to try to find a mini-to-mini cable or an adapter dongle for a normal mini-USB cable to see if I can connect USB devices to the PDA. I've heard that USB hosting capability is possible (one reviewer claimed HP told him so directly). I know it's definitely possible for Windows Mobile devices to host USB devices, as the TDS Ranger can be used with a wide variety of them.

I had a 4GB CF card lying around, so I slapped that thing in. Soooo much space, I've got around 9 hours of music on here now and a better part of the majority of my art and photography portfolio (at least the digital version), and I still have 2.8 GB to go. While it is possible with an additional SD card to get up to 64 GB of storage on this thing, I cannot see why I would ever need that much space.

I've already got some programs of my own design running on the thing. I wrote a general purpose text editor, because the note-writer stores notes in a database rather than on the filesystem. This way, I can write mini HTML files with a small amount of javascript and run it through IE Mobil for a simple scripting system. I'm going to check out Opera Mobile, as I understand its javascript engine is near-complete and its HTML rendering is far superior to IE Mobile. Other programs: a multi-dice roller, a hackish port of my fishtank app to see how well it would work (it needs work), and a pong clone. If you're studious about double buffering and only overwriting dirty areas, then you can actually get quite a bit of performance out of GDI+. I also found a couple of Mobile Managed DirectX samples (esssentially stripped down DX9 minus any shaders), and they are very impressive. Probably not PSP quality, but probably capable of any 2D game one would wish to write.<br><br>Right now, I'm goofing off with trying to slash-and-port Paint.NET to the platform. I'm very close to getting it to build right now, but that required throwing away the automatic update system, a lot of "prettifying code" that was only there to make buttons look different than standard, and some other stuff involving floating point calculations (the Paint.NET source actually provides fixed-point alternatives to all of those snippets anyway, so this will be good for performance in the long run). I've had to stub out a bunch of WinForms and Serialization classes, but I once I get it building I can find suitable alternatives or reimplement what is needed. I think the Serialization stuff is related to extra file formats that I'm not particular concerned about, so I might end up slashing it as well. Programming just got fun again. I love Windows Mobile.<br><br>Battery life has been great. I can use it all day, turning on the wifi every once in a while to check email or something, without needing a recharge. I'd much rather have a <i>large</i> device than a <i>short lived</i> device. It doesn't seem to leak power overnight, either. I've had PDAs before that I would charge completely, take off the charger, go to bed, and wake up with only 80% battery. One stress-test I read put battery life for full screen brightness and streaming music over wifi at 3.5 hours. That's pretty darn impressive.<br><br>In summary, this is the best PDA I've ever had. It's powerful and sturdy, with features out the wazoo.