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That's not a handheld in your pocket. It's a Mobile Media Companion.

True, Hewlett-Packard's (HP) iPAQ rz1715 (see HP Zeros in on Consumers with iPAQ rz1715) also carries this rather puffy sobriquet, but with the rx3715, it actually fits.

The rx3715 delivers media features we haven't seen before in a handheld. It is a successful attempt to answer the big question that handheld designers continually face:

What's next?

The rx3715 ($350) provides a media-rich answer, with a Pocket PC that not only plays media files, but streams them, creates them, and edits them too.

At 4.5 x 2.8 x 0.64 inches, the rx3715 has the same height and width as the rz1715, and is only slightly deeper. It weighs a bit more at 5.6 ounces to 4.23 ounces for the rz1715.

It's smaller than the Dell Axim X30—the Pocket PC the rx3700 is destined most comparable to—which is surprising since it has a built-in camera and the Axim doesn't (see Axim X30 Delivers Power on the Cheap). The rx3700 also gets much better battery life.

The rx3700 runs off a 400MHz Samsung S3C 2440 processor and has a whopping 152MB of memory (which includes 96MB of iPAQ File Store). It has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, both of which you can turn on and off with a few taps. In addition, both types of wireless networking can be used at the same time without interference, which isn't always the case in handhelds.


Top View

Charcoal in color with black accents, the rx3715 exists midway between business and cool. The front has a transflective type QVGA TFT display with 64k colors, with four application buttons below it as well as a round thumb pad for navigation.

The four buttons all do double duty. For example, one calls up the media player with a quick press and the calendar with a three-second press. Another button calls up the iTask application with a quick press and changes the screen's orientation between portrait and landscape with a long press. The dial provides stereo controls when using the media player.

The back contains the lens for the built-in 1.2 megapixel camera, as well as a small silver mirror that you can use when taking self-portraits to make sure you're in the frame. It's too small to show exactly how you look, but it'll give some idea.

One side has a shutter button that can be used to call up the camera software quickly. The top has an SDIO-enabled Secure Digital expansion slot for memory and peripheral expansion, a headphone jack, and the infrared port. The rx3715 ships with a compact docking stand, earbuds, and a skimpy leatherette slipcase that doesn't even have a belt clip.

When you start up the rx3715, you'll see HP's substitute start screen, which takes the place of the standard Windows Mobile today screen (if you miss the old one, you can get it back by changing the settings). This new screen contains four big buttons that bring you to the main media areas: camera, photo library, A/V media player, and a home controller.

The 1.2 megapixel camera won't win any awards, but the pictures are fairly good in bright light conditions. The sample image you see while setting up the shot isn't necessarily what the finished image will look like; several times while we were shooting in low light, we found that the finished shot was much better than the grainy preview. We like that the camera has a 4x digital zoom, which at least gives you more tools than the standard cell phone camera, for example.


Back View with Camera Shutter

HP's Image Zone software is a great way to view your images, and it lets you create a slideshow or edit pictures, as well. With one touch you can also e-mail your pictures or send them to a printer.

The media player gives you an interesting new way to enjoy music—if you're within your home's Wi-Fi network, that is. You can load a program from the installation CD onto your Windows XP computer to create a streaming media server that your rx3715 can then access. This lets you stream songs (only WMA files unfortunately; it will copy MP3s wirelessly, but not stream them) to the iPAQ. It takes a few seconds for songs to load, but it's a nifty feature.

Just as impressive is the Home Controller, which turns your handheld into a universal remote that can control any of your home devices. Getting this setup takes a while, so it may not be for the casual user.

When you add in the 1440 mAh Lithium-Ion user swappable battery, which gets an amazing eight hours of use out of a single charge, you have a winner of a handheld computer-er, we mean Mobile Media Companion. For computing and entertainment all in one, look to the iPAQ rx3715.

If the advanced multimedia features and integrated camera of the rx3700 aren't your cup of tea, then you can save about $220 by going with the comparable Dell Axim X30, which also has much less memory but ships with a blazing fast 624-MHz processor.