I wanted to write a review of this phone for some time, not because I’ve been paid to, because I have one and it’s quite simply amazing. I bought the hp iPAQ hw6915 Smartphone in December 2006 because I needed a phone that was great for the Internet. My phone at the time, and one I still have lying around somewhere, was a Sony Ericsson W810i. That’s a nice little phone, great for music and has a wonderful camera – but it’s useless for the Internet.
The hw6915 by contrast has a rather poor 1.3 mega pixel camera, so isn’t a great camera at all. Everything else it does however is first class.
The phone has wi-fi, allowing me to connect to my BT home hub that I’m paying over the odds for (still not had BT sort that one out) and retrieve my emails and browse my websites from the comfort of my own bed or toilet. I’ve even installed the PDA plugin to this blog just for me!
The phone also has a media player and came with some free download credits so I could grab this nifty bit of software that allows me to convert video files for playback on the phone. Now I can watch Cop on the Edge or the latest *ahem* downloads wherever I am.
For people who get lost regularly the phone comes with the latest version of TomTom and one free city of our choice. I didn’t bother getting the full UK or European maps though as I preferred to get a new standalone TomTom unit, which when paired with the Smartphone becomes a hands free kit. Ah, technology.
The only drawbacks with the phone are that the camera isn’t great and the battery power drops significantly when the wi-fi is enabled.
Now, as regular readers will no doubt be aware I’ve had long standing problems with various customer service and insurance companies, such as Direct Line Insurance and Royal & Sun Alliance. In my battles I’d made many despairing phone calls to these guys and then had to write down what had been said and relay it to my disbelieving work colleagues. What I really could do with was a way of recording my phone calls. Surely my new pocket pc could do that?
Well, no, actually it couldn’t… at least not without some software. After scouring the Internet for all of 5 minutes I came across Vito Technology and their Audio Notes software. This looks good I thought to myself. It claims to be able to auto record your phone calls and even names them by date, and the person who called – saving them as MP3 files.
Surely it’s not that easy? It can’t do that?
It bloody well does. This software cost me $19.99, at today’s exchange rate that’s around £10. Nothing really is it? It downloaded in seconds and installed in minutes. I couldn’t wait to test it out, and did so with my friends from Royal & Sun Alliance. I think you’ll agree it worked a treat.
If you’d like to be able to record your phone calls automatically with your hp iPAQ hw6915 Smartphone, then Vito Technology’s Audio Notes is a seriously slick, and cheap way of doing it.
You can also purchase the hp iPAQ hw6915 Smartphone here from Dixons at a decidedly cheaper price than I paid in December.
Darren Jamieson, aka MrDaz, is the Technical Director and co-founder of Engage Web and has been working online in a career spanning two decades. His first website was built in 1998 and is still live today.
