HP iPaq Glisten Cell Phone Review

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a smartphone from HP here in the United States, but the company’s hoping to shine with its new messaging device for AT&T, called the HP iPaq Glisten. The Windows Mobile 6.5 handset looks decent on paper, offering all the essential features a mobile professional would want in a smartphone: a full range of wireless options, e-mail capabilities with a spacious QWERTY keyboard, and productivity tools. However, after spending some time with the device, we came away feeling completely underwhelmed by the iPaq Glisten. Its AMOLED touch screen should be one of the highlights of the smartphone, but instead, the low-resolution screen and the poor touch interface make it one of the phone’s downfalls. In addition, there’s very little in the way of extras or customization that just makes the smartphone feel drab.

For our money, we’d rather give up the touch screen and go with something like the RIM BlackBerry Bold 9700, which offers a sharper screen, faster performance, and costs about $80 less than the iPaq. However, if you’re not a BlackBerry fan or are partial to Windows Mobile, the iPaq Glisten can do the job, just don’t expect a lot of bells and whistles. The HP iPaq Glisten is available now with a two-year contract for $179.99, after a $50 mail-in rebate.

Design
Designed for business users, the HP iPaq Glisten has an appropriately corporate-friendly look with its all-black casing and silver chrome highlights. Its design is similar to the rest of the QWERTY messaging smartphones out there today but like the Samsung Jack, the Glisten is slightly on the wider side at 2.48 inches wide by 4.45 inches high by 0.52 inch thick, so it’s a bit of a handful when you’re holding it up to your ear on a phone call. It does have a very sturdy construction, however, and has a soft-touch finish on back.

One of the highlights of the iPaq Glisten should be its 2.5-inch AMOLED resistive touch screen, the reason being that AMOLED displays are sharper, brighter, and consume less power than standard LCDs. Unfortunately, the Glisten’s lowly QVGA resolution (240×320) doesn’t make it pop quite as much in comparison to the AMOLED displays on the Samsung Omnia II and the Behold II. It’s still bright and readable, but just doesn’t display images and text quite as smoothly or as sharply as the others.

In addition, the small screen isn’t optimized to take full advantage of the new touch-friendly menus of Windows Mobile 6.5. For example, there’s more scrolling involved since the iPaq Glisten can only show a few of the Start menu icons onscreen at once. Also, once you get past the new Today screen and Start menu, the submenus look a bit antiquated and selecting items from the cramped drop-down require that you break out the stylus to make selections. The virtual soft keys along the bottom of the Home screen also require a bit of precision, so we would have preferred the traditional physical buttons. You do get a few navigation controls below the display, however, including Talk and End keys, a Start menu shortcut, an OK button, and a directional keypad.

Now, while we’re not huge fans of the Glisten’s screen, we have few complaints about the smartphone’s full QWERTY keyboard. It features large, domed buttons with clear lettering and ample backlight, so we had very little problem using the keyboard. The bottom row also includes shortcuts to several apps, including the Web browser, calendar, messages, and AT&T Navigator, which is handy.

On top of the device, there’s a power button and a quick-launch key to turn Wi-Fi on/off. The left side holds a volume rocker while you’ll find a 3.5mm headphone jack and a Micro-USB port on the right. As usual, the camera is located on back with the microSD expansion slot hiding behind the battery door.

AT&T packages the HP iPaq Glisten with basic accessories, including an AC adapter, a USB cable, a software CD, and reference material. For more add-ons, please check our cell phone accessories, ringtones, and help page.

Features
The HP iPaq Glisten keeps it fairly straightforward in the features department, remaining focused on the most essential tools for business users. As we noted earlier, the smartphone is running Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional Edition, so you get some of the new benefits of the updated OS, such as Microsoft’s My Phone backup service, Windows Marketplace for Mobile, and an improved Internet Explorer Mobile.