It's the acclaimed iPAQ h4150 all over again as Jorgen Sundgot checks out HP's new h4350 - just with a larger battery and an integrated thumbboard.
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Hewlett-Packard has certainly been the busiest Pocket PC manufacturer this year with six models launched so far - of which the h4350 is the very last to make it to market. Here just in time for Christmas, the h4350 shares the vast majority of the feature list of the recently launched h4150, which achieved one of the highest scores ever of handhelds reviewed here at infoSync World. Based on this comparison, you may already have guessed that we have quite a few nice things to say about the h4350 as well.
 | The iPAQ h4350 is ideal for messaging heavy users when combined with a Bluetooth phone or Wi-Fi network
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Design
The h4350 is a long affair of a handheld, which of course is due to the integrated thumbboard placed below the button range straddling the handheld just below its display. Likely to be a major selling point, the thumbboard offers generally good ergonomics and functionality, however thumbboards with better design can be found - although not in devices from Pocket PC manufacturers. Tactile feedback as well as audible feedback is excellent: thankfully, HP made button clicks a hardware property rather an a software feature. More on this later. The handheld on a whole also offers satisfactorily ergonomics as its point of gravity is fortunately well-balanced.
As with previous iPAQ models in the h1900 and h4000 series, the h4350 offers an excellent, 16-bit transflective display which delivers top-notch brightness, clarity and ClearType performance. Stylus travel is suitably short, and the stylus itself is a quite alright aluminum affair.
Buttons are not plentiful on the h4350, but it does offer the important ones including four hardware shortcut buttons below the display; a voice record button situated just below the infrared port far up on the left side of the device, and a power on/off button placed centered at the top of the unit's front. All of these offer excellent tactile feedback, but the voice record button can be somewhat hard to locate due to it being quite recessed - a sacrifice likely made so that users would not have to suffer from repeated accidental presses.
Two LEDs expertly indicate Bluetooth and Wi-Fi activity, as well as alarms and charge status using a combination of green, blue and orange - all at comfortable brightness. What regards audio, the h4350 performs satisfactory but should not be considered an audio player replacement as it lacks bass boost functions. Audio output is otherwise good both through the 3.5 mm jack and the unit's speaker - interestingly situated centered among the keys of the thumbboard.
Connectivity
As with its sibling, the h4150, the h4350 makes a good impression in the connectivity department. Not only does it offer an SDIO capable SD/MMC Card expansion slot and an infrared port, but also integrated Bluetooth and Wi-Fi (802.11b). With regard to Bluetooth, a comfortably wide range of profiles are included, and Wi-Fi boasts a power saving mode as well as support for 128 bit WEP encryption and 802.1x, which should reassure even the most cautious of users (and network administrators). A rather standard USB cradle is also included, which in a nice touch harbours an extra charging slot for additional batteries.
Specifications
Powered as it is by a 400 MHz Intel PXA255 XScale processor, the h4350 offers excellent performance despite its heavy load of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi drivers, however doesn't stand particularly out from other Pocket PCs fitted with the same processor. This also regards the amount of RAM available; at 56 MB, the h4350 here ranks as average to good.
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