Windows Phone Thoughts: PDAGold Gets Some Hands-on Time with the iPAQ hx4700

"At first sight, you'll notice the device's unusual design. HP designers allowed their imagination free rein and hx4700 resembles a futuristic communicator rather than 2004 PDA. Forget about silvery plastic - the body is made of magnesium alloy so that it is as light as plastic but incomparably more durable. Its dark colour with metallic shine makes the device appear smaller than it is. Instead of a common joypad, this iPAQ features a unique touchpad, the same as that used in laptop computers. It can work in two modes - either as a rather unusual joypad or as a normal touchpad which even shows a pointer on the display! It remains to be seen if it is an ingenious innovation or a dead end - now, it's too early to judge. For a device with two expansion slots (SDIO and CF type II), it is extremely thin - it looks gorgeous with its 15 millimetres."



I don't know how Pavel does it, or how HP allows him to publish these reviews, but he managed to get his hands on an hx4700. This device looks simply awesome - a 4" VGA screen, fast 624 mhz CPU, 128 MB of Flash ROM (with about 80 MB for storage), 64 MB of RAM (for running programs - savvy users will install everything to Flash ROM), Bluetooth, WiFi, and a whole lot more. The only thing I'm a little suspicious of is the touch pad, but time will tell how that works out for gaming and whatnot. Check out Pavel's preview for more information.

There's no pricing yet, but this is the only pre-order page I've seen for the hx4700 yet. If you want one of these bad boys, put your name down. [Affiliate]