RumorMill™: Additional Details on the HP iPAQ h6300

A great deal of information has leaked out over the past few months about an upcoming iPAQ that will offer three different forms of wireless networking: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GSM/GPRS. Now, even more details of the iPAQ h6300 series have emerged.

Hewlett Packard has long had a habit of allowing some of its corporate clients to see its Pocket PCs before they are announced to the general public. Someone has written to iPAQabilities.com with the details of one such meeting in which an h6315 was demonstrated.

Reportedly, this person was told by an HP employee that the specifications for the h6300 series that leaked out last week are correct.

He then took the opportunity to ask why these models will have a 200 MHz Texas Instruments OMAP 1510 processor, instead of one of the much faster Intel XScale chips that were announced last week. The HP employee said this was done to help keep the price of the h6300 series low enough to make it a consumer device. In addition, HP engineers found that these models are very reliable and stable using the TI processor. TI did some of the earliest work on combining Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GSM/GPRS into a single device.

Stability appears to have been a major goal for these models. With this in mind, the h6300 series will not initially come with the new Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition. An upgrade should be available some time after the devices hit the market.

According to this report, the h6300 series will be available from T-Mobile in May and from AT&T in August. It should be available in Europe in August, as well.

This means these Pocket PCs should be on the market before the Motorola MPx, the other upcoming handheld that will include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GSM/GPRS. However, according to the report on iPAQabilities.com, HP isn't worried about competition from the MPx because the two devices are so different. As the HP employee explained it, the h6300 series will be a wireless Pocket PC, while the MPx will be a mobile phone with PDA features.

An Overview of the iPAQ h6300 Series

There can be little doubt that there will be an iPAQ h6300 series coming at some point. Last month, HP even had a page on its support site for it, though this has since been removed. Several mentions of it have also been found in the support database for a U.S. wireless carrier.

According to Smartfone.Net, there will be two models in this series. One, called the iPAQ h6315, will include a built-in camera and will sell for $599. A second model, called the iPAQ h6310, won't have a camera and will sell for $579. Both of these will have 64 MB of RAM and 64 MB of Flash ROM.

The h6300 series will supposedly include 3.5-inch transflective screens capable of displaying 16-bit color. These will have a 240-by-320-pixel resolution.

They will also have an SDIO-capable SD/MMC slot and a flip cover.

Reportedly, the h6300 series will be Quad-Band (850/900/1800/1900) GSM/GPRS devices, meaning they could be used in the U.S., Europe, and almost every other country.

However, they won't stop there. They are expected to be the first cellular wireless handhelds that will also offer Bluetooth 1.1 and Wi-Fi (802.11b) wireless networking.

According to specifications leaked to MTekk, these Pocket PCs will be 4.7 inches high, 3.0 inches wide, and 0.7 inches thick (11.9 x 7.5 x 1.9 cm). They will weigh 6.7 ounces (190 g).

Because a powerful battery is necessary for any wireless handheld, the h6300 series will sport an 1800 mAh swappable one. An even higher capacity one will also be available separately.

Though the h6300 series won't include a built-in keyboard, a clip-on thumboard will come standard with every one. Supposedly, they will come with a desktop cradle and a belt clip.

Of course, all of this information is unconfirmed, and any of these specifications could turn out to be incorrect.

Related Links

• Developers Dealing with the Problems of Windows Mobile SE
• Brighthand's First Impressions of the Motorola MPx