The positive apect is also the fine HP quality (well, I’m a real HP fan). This device feels quite nice in the hand and looks very noble. However, the size of iPAQ 614 makes it definitely to a real men toy.

In general I’m quite happy with my new mate, but still there is a number of shortcomings, which one not sees at the first glance. First of all it’s the keypad. I found it a bit dissapointing, that it is almost too large and uncomfortable for typing by one hand (for me it is an important factor, because I type very often sms by driving the car ). The innovative “smart-touch navigation wheel” is imho also a really weired and useless thing. It’s difficult to use and makes the text input to a complicated task. That is why after a short hasitation I just switched it off. I think, it would be much better, if iPAQ 614 had a traditional joystick like most of the PDAs and communicators.

The next negative aspect is the silent speaker. Not only the ring tones sound bad, but also all the programs audio output. For comparison using TomTom at my Nokia N73 is much more pleasant than Tomtom navigator at iPAQ 614.

Now a couple of words to unusual built-in Qualcomm MSM6280 GPS chip. The first impression is good. I tested it with my TomTom software and Google mobile client. Quite fine precision and comparable short time for finding a fix point. At this point I’d like to mention a strange peculiarity. GPS reciever is disabled by default. You can see that in iPAQ hardware manager. Only when you start some GPS based application, GPS modul gets automatically activated. One tipp for TomTom users: in your GPS options choose “Other NMEA GPS Receiver” and then COM6 port (some Blogs recommend port COM8, but in my case it didn’t work). It may take a while till the GPS reciever wakes up.

I guess that were the most interesting fact, that are worth mentioning here. As I already said, in general HP iPAQ 614 is a nice toy with great computing capacities. Whether it is a thing for you…hm, depends on your own taste. My personal persuasion has got more firm: it’s better to have separately a compact mobile phone for making calls and a pocket PC for all the other needs The hybride solutions are just still not ripe enough.

Of course it’s equiped with Bluetooth, Wlan and Sirf III GPS. There is also a possibility to connect USB devices, for example a memory stick. Trimble Nomad is driven by Windows Mobile 6.0 (requires ActiveSync 4,5 or higher for connection with your desctop computer).

Besides splendid computing power, Trimble Nomad is a very robust device. I didn’t try to play soccer with it, but I threw it several times against the wall… and it works!!!

Now I’m looking forward to a new device, that our company yesterday ordered , HP iPAQ 114. It must be also a cool device. I’ll publish then my feedback in a later post.

The part we are responsible for is the actual program that runs on PDAs and navigates you through Dutch-German landscapes. The last test had an official character. About 30 guests were invited and we made a 5 km long bike tour in the region. The application made already a stable impression. We gathered the first feedback from our first users and will try to realize their comments and wished as soon as possible.

Unfortunately I can’t yet publish the screenshots of ERIGG. Our designer created a really great skin. But I’m not sure about how legal it is to post screenshots now, I have to clear up this question with my boss. In any case, to be continued…:)

Looking in the internet for possible solutions, I didn’t find any helpful tips. But I came across a very nice API called SharpGPS. This is a GPS library for .NET 2.0 and .NET 2.0 Compact Framework. The current version is 0.5 alpha I liked the structural organization of the .NET Solution. The project comrises even some GUIs for testing the implemented features. This API can suite well for those developers who don’t want to invent bicycle once again and don’t want to waste their time with parsing NMEA protocol strings. For alpha 0.5 it’s a good result. I hope that in the future this API will contain some methods for increasing the quality of GPS precision and offer solutions for the problems I talked about at the beginning of the posting.

This nice toy looks like a GPS mouse, just a little bit bigger. It comprises SIRF III GPS chip set and GSM modem (and of course a mobile phone SIM card). If you want to receive current position of the device you just call the appropriate number and few seconds later you receive sms with GPS information. MicroTracker can also periodically send such sms to the five different numbers. Besides there is an option to send GPS information over GPRS that can be in most cases cheaper. If you want to use this device as for example a car theft alert, you just hide MicroTracker some where in the car and if the car starts to move with the speed more then 1 mile per second or the car position changes at 100 meters you recieve immediately the alert sms. In this case you can call the device and listen to what is happining in your car.

I also saw somewhere a suggetion to bind MicroTracker to your cat or dog in order to see where your pet is currently walking. In the same manner you can any time keep an eye on where your kids are. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that this nice toy can also write down the track as for example the Garmin devices. So you can later see the whole route of the subjects of your observation.

The application started really quickly. My Bluetooth was off so TomTom asked me, whether I wish to activate it. Just one or two seconds later my GPS mouse was found! That’s really astonishing. I never coded for Symbian OS, but I guess that one needs also to open a COM port and to look whether the GPS mouse is hanging on it. In the worst case your program should run through all the ports and wait more then one second on each of them… Great! one point for TomTom.

The next thing that surprised me pleasantly was the fact that the map was also loaded very quickly. I have only experience with Windows Mobile 5.0 and it take a bit more time there till directX gets initialized.

Navigation itself is impressive too. In comparison to T-Mobile Navigation software for example TomTom is absolutly the leader. TomTom calculated the shortest way to my home indeed and gave me the right instructions even when I drove in a tunnel without GPS signal (as I alredy said imho the approximation heuristics is great).

The only discomfort I found so far is the case when you want to make a call during the navigation process. On the second or on the third menu page there is an item “Make a call”, but there happened nothing when I pressed it. So I had to exit the application in order to call my friend.

So in general I’m very satisfied with TomTom and my Hardware. By the way, I didn’t mention, but I guess it can be helpfull for somebody. HOLUX BT mouse has recommended itself as a nice device. In several blogs I read that the people have problems to build a connection with their BT mouse. I tested HOLUX with various PDAs like ASUS, HP, MDA III etc. and now with my Nokia N73. It works! And it works well. It needs just a couple of seconds to find the satalites (as a comparison Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket LOOX with Sirf III GPS reciever needs about 10 minutes for this process) and the precision is then only few meters.