Tuxtops

LionBattery.com was very kind to send us over their MugenPower-branded HLI-RX34XL battery that fits the HP IPAQ RX3100 & RX3400 Pocket PCs. We tested the battery with our rx-3115 PDA.

Installation of the battery is very easy, as the rx-3115 features a latch for easy opening of the battery compartment. One thing that will positively surprise some people is the fact that the 3200mAh Mugen Power battery is not much bigger than the default 920 mAh HP battery. Given the fact that it packs more than three times the battery power found on the default battery, one would expect that it would be 3x the size. And yet, it's only double the size, creating only a small bump on the back of the PDA. The Mugen Power battery comes with its own battery door.

Charging the battery for the first time takes about 5 hours. Soon after we ran long tests and here are our results:

LCD OFF, mp3 ON streaming via WiFi: 10 hours

LCD OFF, mp3 ON reading from SD: 29 hours

LCD ON but with backlight OFF, Skype ON with WiFi ON: 40 hours

LCD at 50% brightness, Wireless OFF, QVGA DivX playback: 12 hours

LCD at 10% brightness, WiFi ON, browsing: 11 hours

Normal PDA usage with LCD at 10% brightness, wireless OFF: 43 hours

Normal PDA usage with LCD at 10% brightness, BT ON, WiFi/IrDA OFF: 38 hours

With the small exception of mp3 streaming via WiFi, the rest of the results are very positive. This battery breaths a new life to your PDA! It is our estimation that if you use your PDA only for normal PDA activities, just about an hour a day, you won't need to re-charge it more than once a week. This is a huge time saver for business users, while it's almost as good for multimedia users too. Notice how QVGA DivX playback lasted almost 12 hours, when the best dedicated video-PMP today (e.g. the Archos devices), barely yields more than 6 hours of battery life. And this fact alone makes this battery worth its $87 it cost.

In the boring world of me-too personal computers, only a few companies are frequently bold enough to try something really new. Apple and Sony are the usual suspects. Microsoft and Intel, which dominate the industry, rarely make the list of design risk-takers. So the latter two leaders deserve credit for cooking up a whole new type of Windows computer -- a machine that's smaller than the smallest mainstream laptop -- the Ultra Mobile PC, or UMPC. The first UMPC for the U.S. market, the Samsung Q1, goes on sale next week at Best Buy's Web site.

Nokia's N80 was introduced with the second wave of Nseries handsets in November of 2005. It packs quad-band GSM/EDGE support and 3G WCDMA access into an attractive slider form factor. But there is more to the N80 that makes it so interesting. For one, it has 802.11b WiFi support and a SIP compatible VOIP client, meaning you could theoretically use the N80 with a VOIP provider such as BroadVoice or Vonage. When you add a 3 megapixel camera to the mix and a very high resolution display, things start to look very interesting indeed. Elsewhere, Nokia introduced the 5500 Sport phone.

One of the emerging trends with Windows Mobile 5.0 devices is the inclusion of built-in GPS. Enter the G500, E-TEN's latest Pocket PC Phone offering. Being my second convergence device (the previous being the M500), I was curious to see if E-TEN was able to continue with their excellent track record. Did the G500 live up to my hopes and expectations? To find out you'll have to join me on a review that every parent '¦ er, Pocket PC owner should read.

Microsoft used the annual Mobile & Embedded DevCon to announce the availability of a beta release of Windows CE 6, the next generation of its real-time software used to build customized operating systems for devices such as internet protocol set-top-boxes, Global Positioning System-based devices, and industrial automation and medical devices. With a redesigned operating system kernel architecture, expanded capacity for simultaneous processes (up to 32000) and newly integrated tool set, Windows CE 6 promises help device makers more quickly create devices that support a range of applications for high-demand categories.

Mizi Research is shipping a new version of its Linux software stack for mobile phones. Prizm 2.5 adds support for one-handed operation, support for new streaming media formats, and the option of a Flash-based dynamic user interface. It is based on a 2.4-series kernel. Samsung has shipped a new Linux-based smartphone in China. The SCH-i819 targets Chinese business travelers, and is the first Linux phone to support dual-band cellular operation with both CDMA 1x (800MHz) and dual-band GSM (900/1800MHz) networks, according to Mizi Research, which supplied the phone's Linux stack.

OSNews looks at the Symbian/UIQ-based Motorola M1000 3G phone. Many shots included.

Jørgen Sundgot gets up close and personal with the Nokia E61 business phone, sporting a BlackBerry-like design with a thumbboard, landscape-oriented high-resolution display, 3G, Wi-Fi and more.

The X820 is a bar type phone with a 2 megapixel camera, camcorder, MP3 player, Bluetooth connectivity, file viewer and TV out. The slim phone will be released in Europe including Russia in this week and China in June.

I've spent a lot of time with the "Web Browser for S60" (formerly known as OSS Browser), I demo-ed it for four days at CeBIT, so I feel I'm quite experienced with it. Opera released their browser for S60 3rd Edition today, I've been playing around with it this afternoon. Here's my first impressions of how it compares with the "Web Browser for S60" which comes with your 3rd Edition device - I used a Nokia E61 for my tests...