Jørgen Sundgot examines Samsung's Windows CE .NET 4.2 based NEXiO XP30 handheld, finding powerful hardware merged with good software - and a poor battery.
Review summary of the Samsung NEXiO XP30:
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 Most of the considerable girth of Samsung’s NEXiO’ XP30 is occupied by a glorious, high-resolution 5" screen, backed up by a snappy processor, generous memory and Wi-Fi to create a good hardware base. Unfortunately, battery life is expectedly short as compared to other handhelds, but the trade-off could be well worth it. Anticipating its main weakness, Samsung stocked the XP30 with applications - but the two most interesting ones come straight out of Microsoft: Internet Explorer and Remote Desktop. This is where the XP30 excels, although it also makes a favourable impression in other areas. Release: June 2005. Price: $675.
Pros: Larger than life screen; Wi-Fi; superb for web browsing and remote desktop
Cons: Short battery life; poor application compatibility; hefty size
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Full review of the Samsung NEXiO XP30:
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These days, innovation in the handheld category isn't what it once was; most manufacturers have settled on Windows Mobile, while PalmSource still lingers through palmOne's reliance on the once-ubiquitous platform. Doing something new usually entails stacking more features atop a tried-and-tested solution - but not so with Samsung's NEXiO XP30, which foregoes Windows Mobile in favour of Windows CE .NET 4.2. The result? Power - and limitations - aplenty.
Holy handheld screen, Batman!
If you've always felt constrained by the limited resolution and screen estate of current handhelds, look no further: the XP30 is equipped with an absolutely glorious 65K colour, transflective TFT display which consumes the majority of the device at a diagonal size of 5 inches and resolution of 800 x 480 pixels. It does, however, cause the XP30 to measure a seam-bursting 155 x 91 x 13 mm and weigh a solid 240 g, but trust us: it's worth it, despite the unit being too heavy to be held comfortably in one hand for more than fifteen minutes or so.
The remainder of the XP30's landscape-oriented exterior presents an excellent button array, including a superb navigational pad along with highlights including a dedicated backlight on/off toggle as well as a 'hold' button. An assortment of modest alert LEDs are also in place, as is a 2.5 mm earphone jack for which a quite satisfactory headset comes bundled; a USB host port; and a CompactFlash Type II expansion slot. Lastly, there's also a rather mediocre mono speaker placed on the front of the unit.
Connect the dots
What regards connectivity, the aforementioned CompactFlash Type II slot is not the only means of reaching out to the world with the XP30. Also incorporating Wi-Fi, the device supports data transfer speeds of up to 10 Mbps courtesy of the 802.11b standard, and also comes with WEP encryption and 802.1x support; adequate, but nothing more in way of security.
Sadly, not only is Infrared but also Bluetooth missing, negating use of the XP30 in conjunction with a mobile phone for Internet connectivity. At the very least, however, CE .NET 4.2 offers integrated Bluetooth drivers to allow for the adding of a CompactFlash Bluetooth card without the need for separate drivers - more on this later. Wireless aside, the only remaining local connectivity option for the XP30 is either a USB cable or cradle, both of which are included with the device.
Powered by an Intel PXA256 XScale processor running at 400 MHz, the XP30 is surprisingly snappy at most tasks. With 128 MB of RAM onboard, there's an adequate amount of memory in place, but due to the lack of automatic shutdown mechanisms of the kind found in Windows Mobile we recommend avoiding hard core multitasking. As a nice little bonus, there's also 32 MB of non-volatile memory available to users.
Expectedly, all of this power does take its toll on battery life. The XP30 is powered by a rechargeable, non-exchangeable 1500 mAh Lithium Polymer battery which barely lasts a day in normal use; two hours at most with intensive Wi-Fi use and medium screen brightness. Seen in conjunction with the omission of Bluetooth and Infrared, it's clear Samsung did not design the XP30 as a long-lasting roaming companion but rather a semi-detached device predominantly constructed for the purpose of viewing data.
Versatile by nature and by need
The Windows CE .NET 4.2 operating system powering the XP30 delivers a user experience akin to Windows XP: windows are resizeable, there's a desktop, start menu, task bar and system tray. Unlike Windows Mobile, however, which is in fact a platform built atop Windows CE .NET, applications have not at all been designed for one-handed use, with users having to almost exclusively on a stylus emulating mouse functions for navigating the interface.
Navigating the XP30 in this manner is quite simple and straightforward for existing Windows users as everything is where one expects it to be. Text input is a similarly pleasant affair, with two different sizes of virtual keyboards and speedy and accurate, full-screen handwriting recognition presenting a good alternative. Granted, the ability to navigate more applications one-handedly would have been nice, but it's a trade-off in the name of power.
Thankfully, the XP30 comes bundled with an extensive suite of applications from all sorts of companies - which is a necessity given the near complete lack of 3rd party applications that run atop the barebones CE .NET operating system. First off, we find a full PIM suite which is rather mediocre, and also needs Samsung's own NEXiO Sync application in addition to Microsoft's ActiveSync in order to synchronize all data properly.
Things start looking up slightly as we arrive at the topic of office related applications, with the XP30 offering a Word compatible word processor; Excel compatible spreadsheet; and viewers for PowerPoint and Adobe Acrobat documents. None of these impress in way of functionality, but at least support for all of the most frequently used business formats are in place.
Moving to multimedia, we find Microsoft's own Windows Media Player which tackles MP3 and WMA audio files, as well as MPEG and Windows Media Video up to version 7; alas, there's no support for secure WMA. In addition, the XP30 also includes a barebones MP3 player where users can create one single playlist - a 'feature' we'll let speak for itself, and, surprisingly, a rather nice image viewer.
Now we're getting somewhere
The most interesting aspect of the XP30, however, are the applications which revolve around connectivity. When combined with high-speed Wi-Fi connectivity, the 5.0 core based Internet Explorer effectively turns the XP30 into the best small form-factor web browsing tablet we've seen; the only minor drawback is the lack of support for Macromedia Flash. Similarly excellent is the Remote Desktop application, which unlike that found in Windows Mobile is as fully featured as that found on any given Windows XP PC and as such capable of bringing what amounts to a full and complete PC experience straight to the screen of the XP30 over Wi-Fi: simply marvellous.
Where the Remote Desktop client surpasses that of Windows Mobile, however, the e-mail client leaves something to be desired. Its IMAP4 implementation appears to be better than that of Windows Mobile, but although POP3 and SMTP are also supported, Exchange ActiveSync is not; given the slant of the XP30 this is not terribly important, but possibly disappointing for a hardcore enterprise user. Further on the note of connectivity, we also find MSN Messenger and even a Telnet client - and lastly, a host of other small, handy utilities of various kinds including an MS DOS prompt; File Explorer; Backup application and more.
In other words, Samsung did a good job with providing a broad application set - which is more important than one might think, since 3rd party applications for the CE .NET 4.2 operating system are very few and far between. Windows Mobile applications, for instance, cannot run atop it, and the same goes for drivers - meaning finding compatible accessories, such as for instance Bluetooth cards, could prove something of a challenge.
Availability
The Samsung NEXiO XP30 is scheduled for availability in Europe and North America in the first half of 2005, and is to sell in the $675 USD range.
Price and availability
The Samsung NEXiO XP30 will start selling for $675 () in June 2005.
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