I have also checked on several battery drain problems that the unit can have. If you are using the phone and you provider’s signal is lost or weak the HP will increase the wattage the phone attenna is using from 4 watts to 8 watts and is very agressive about doing this. In addition the blue tooth does the same thing. So if you were to have your phone in an area where the signal was weak and your blue tooth headset was too far away or if you forgot and left the bluetooth on with no headset you could be consuming 16 watts of power and the battery will be empty in a very short time.

In addition just recently my phone broke connection during a call and shut down. When I brought it back up it was hung in startup screen and would not reboot either from a soft or hard reboot. I sent it to HP and they had to fix it. But they honored my warranty and fixed it for free! They really do stand behind their products.

The plastics on this are so thin and cheap it is almost a marvel how they were engineered. The battery cover is paper thin and is easily flexed. I will not be surprised when the plastic slide tabs break off the battery cover.
The Nav button is sharp on the edges, has a very _toy-like feel and is also extrmely cheap feeling. The “click” to the plastic feeling keys is also cheap. The Program lag when opening is almost unbearable for me, right down to the phone function buttons which have that same WM5 lag. If I hang up a call, it will take 3 seconds AFTER I press the red hang up button for the call to officially end!! Just make sure you dont say anything your caller may hear until you confirm that the call has ended.. and thats NOT after you press the red button!… same goes for the Green “send” button. horribly slow.
The Bluetooth manager paired with each of my Bluetooth headsets (Jabra JX10, Nokia 800, and Plantronics 940) NONE of them worked with the 6945 after pairing. I mean did NOT work. period. The paired and did not receive or send information back/forth. (and yes, I had eveything set up correctly, I even resorted to hard resetting.. still nothing, I called HP,… No help.. seems I either got a strange Bluetooth radio or it just plain doesnt work.. I chaulked it up to another fantastic HP Quality control.

The Camera Lag was devastating.. you can forget that Quick candid snapshot… youll need 2 minutes of waiting to compose that picture!!

postives?? a well lit keyboard ( sure it should be, the plastics are so paper thin any light can shine through!)
Wifi works
screen colors are good and good daylight viewing
call quality is alot better than previous editions of Ipaq phones still not as good as my E61
The obvious plethera of 3rd party applications is always a plus, but cant load too many as the memory is once again pathetic! For $600.00USD you would think HP could include 128 of usable memory.

I am returning my HW6945 for many reasons.

I’ll stick with my superbly made Nokia E61 with built in Voice control, a bluetooth that works very very very well, The best voice phone of any phone Ive used, fantastic keyboard, screen, best speaker i have ever heard.. SMS, Email, and oh.. syncs with Outlook every time and includes a built in backup for the desktop. etc…

HP.. why cant you produce a usable PDA?Phone?? WM5 is just plain horrible, active sync is a joke,

{update}
just to throw salt in the wound, HP ’s technical support ( after an hour on the phone) say they are going to “escalate” my case to upper support and will be in touch within FOUR.. yes 4 days to arrange for the replacement!! What??? Why cant you arrange for the replacement of the defective unit right now??? The reply you ask?? I’m sorry sir, this is our policy.. I will do my best.. so.. in four days I canhope for a call… return shipping, replacement shipping… oh.. say 10 days later or more I should recieve my $600.00 Ipaq… Nice Job HP!!!!

I am also looking for a new phone. Looked at the Samsung Blackjack, but no touch screen, and the keyboard is not as nice as the Treo. The 680 is a no-go, as I want HSDPA – or some kind of real 3G – and Palm OS is DOA. The 8525 looks promising, but it is clearly a PDA first, and phone second. The 750 may work – but 240×240 screen, and the Treo 650 issues I have been facing make me wary.

I still have my V551 which I use on weekends when I do not need all the PDA functions. Simple swap of the SIM card and I go from PDA to flip-phone and back.

Thank you for your comments. I’m very glad that someone likes this device! It just wasn’t for me…

BTW: what do you think of the phone experience? Does the size bother you?

Having a single device with GPS (MS Streets is FREE and works great), WiFi (better signal strength than my old TX), Bluetooth and GSM (unlocked) is about all I could ever ask.

I am learning to adjust to a new operating system but that is only a small hurdle. I have loaded a few of my apps to supplement the included apps but overall, the iPAQ is very complete right out of the box.

Annoyances are few:

1. Sync’ing files to the miniSD card is not possible without a 3rd party software app. Worthwhile tradeoff considering my TX could not run any apps from expansion cards if they needed a conduit. The iPAQ allows all apps to run from the miniSD card.

2. ZipLinq does not yet have a USB Charger/sync cable for the iPAQ 6945. IrDA is an ugly way to sync when traveling and carrying around transformers is not ideal.

3. Not all apps work on the 240 x 240 screen. I have found a handful of apps that do not understand that there is a keyboard present and that the screen is not the size of a traditional WM5 device. Definately drives the need for “trial” versions. I figure that’s the price for being early on the curve.

Beyond that, $500 was a great deal for all the connectivity and apps. I’d do it again tomorrow.

Mitchell:
Unless I’m missing a setting somewhere to turn on the keyboard backlight, you can see in the picture linked below, how mine lights up:

http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/assets/hp-ipaq-hw6945-12.jpg

I don’t have the phone with me today to double check…

Julie, you said in your review that:

The Review wrote:

The start and end buttons are backlit, but unfortunately the keyboard is not.

According to the MobileTechReview that I read (and numerous other things prior) says that it does???

http://www.mobiletechreview.com/HP-iPAQ-hw6915.htm

I’m currently using a Nokia 6600 (a few years old) which I really like, but Symbian smart phones are hard to find in the US and the grey market import prices are very high. Considering switching to one of the better-reviewed Windows smartphones consequently.

Diego

http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/review/hp_ipaq_hw6945_mobile_messenger

Just click the POST REPLY button on this page.