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Yesterday, I said “I love the form factor! As much as I like my 6315, it always feels a little big in my hand”. When you look at the size specification, there really isn’t much of a difference — or is there? By the numbers, NO, but by the feel YES!
6315 4.68″ x 2.95″ x .73″ (119 mm x 75 mm x 18.7 mm) 6500 4.645″ x 2.795″ x .826″ (118 mm x 71 mm x 21 mm)
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When I hold my 6315 in the palm of my hand, the “square” edge design has a direct and distinct impact on its feel and comfort. I believe the consequence of its design made it “feel big” and yet, the new 6500, with just a slight difference in length (0.035), which is really negligible, coupled with a 0.155 smaller width, has a very SMOOTH feel to it. So what is the difference?
Design is everything!
By replacing the square edges with a SMOOTH rounded shape that clearly was designed to comfortably rest in the palm of your hand, HP has produced a device that will fit perfectly in virtually everyone’s hand. The “feel” is totally different where comfort was clearly a priority to the HP design team. When you rest something in your palm, you have less space to “naturally” hold the object in the inner part of your palm than the outer part. By rounding the back side of the iPAQ more than the top, the designers achieved not only a device that is aesthetically good looking but more importantly, a device that gives immediate comfort to the user. This was a great decision!
What does it look like?
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You can’t help but be “awed” as you look at the top of the device. Power button in the top right corner, speaker “slits” placed in the middle and an HP logo on the left. A SQUARE screen, different to look at first, covered with a smoke gray flip lid and below the screen we have four buttons (answer phone, calendar, mail, hang up phone) and a VERY COOL joystick for navigation.
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And I mean very cool because it has a very slick feel to it as well as a distinct responsiveness to touch. The lower portion has a lighted keyboard which has a slick design and interesting feel to it. I’m not too comfortable using the keyboard — yet. Overall — it looks very nice, as I said before — SMOOTH, VERY SMOOTH!
The “flip lid” deserves some mention. Besides a perfect fit blending into the device as if it was not there, it locks up and stays out of your way when you want to work on the screen — I like that and I expect you will too!
Tomorrow, the sides and back.
You can read my previous SMOOTH – VERY SMOOTH tidbits here:
Smooth – Very Smooth! part 1