The HP iPaq Glisten is now available for $179.99 with a two-year contract (as low as $49.99 at Amazon) and considering HP’s absence from the U.S. market you’d think they’d come out with a near-perfect smartphone. While there are some things that have been done right on the iPaq Glisten, the things that have been done wrong are overwhelming.
Basically, the HP iPaq Glisten would be a pretty good phone if it weren’t for the screen, which should be reason enough to purchase this product. They say to never judge a book by its cover, but with the iPaq Glisten you get a mixed message. See, the device offers enough desirable features encased within a body that is solid with a nice soft-touch finish on the back to warrant a purchase; however, you might want to spend your hard-earned dollars on something else considering that the AMOLED resistive touchscreen offers a lower resolution QVGA display (240 x 320) – which ultimately displays text and images poorly – than other phones and its small size (2.5 inches) makes interacting with the menus difficult.
Fighting the good fight for the iPaq Glisten is its full QWERTY keyboard that provides large, easily legible buttons and there are some shortcut buttons to some commonly used apps and for the Web browser, calendar, messages, and AT&T navigator.
The operating system that’s giving orders is Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional Edition, which offers some great functionality and usability like MS’ Myphone backup service, Windows Marketplace for Mobile, an improved Internet Explorer Mobile, and real-time synchronization with Outlook e-mail, calendar, tasks, and contacts. (Speaking of Outlook, the iPaq Glisten comes with the full MS Office Mobile Suite.) Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, the screen on the iPaq Glisten is too small, especially where Windows Mobile 6.5 is concerned; too few icons appear on the Windows’ start menu, which means a lot of scrolling and even worse is the required use of a stylus once you get beyond the Today and Home screens and the precision needed to use the virtual keys.
Physically, there are some navigation keys and all the jacks and ports are present and accounted for. On the social side of things, you can assign a photo, a group ID, or a custom ringtone to identify who’s calling you. There’s also a Facebook app pre-installed (you can always download other social apps), a bunch of AT&T apps are also installed, and you have support for both personal and corporate e-mail.
Undressing the HP iPaq Glisten
The HP iPaq Glisten weighs 4.66 ounces and measures 2.48” x 4.45” x 0.52”. There’s a basic media player for listening to and watching the things you like while there’s 256MB SDRAM/512MB Flash but it’s expandable up to 32GB via the microSD slot. There’s also a decent 3.1-megapixel, fixed-focus camera with video-recording capabilities. HP also included its proprietary PhotoSmart Mobile app so you can edit photos on the iPaq Glisten.
The wireless options on the iPaq include Bluetooth 2.1, GPS, Wi-Fi, and support for AT&T's 3G network. And there’s quad-band world roaming.
Where battery life is concerned, you’ll get 5 hours and up to 15 days of standby time.
