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Sharp Mobilon 4600

The new Sharp Mobilon 4600 is a modest upgrade to one of the first color handhelds on the market, the Sharp Mobilon 4500, sharing that honor with the HP620LX. Color changes the entire experience for users, with both pros and cons. Beyond the color screen, the Sharp 4600 is a full featured, advanced, Windows CE device worthy of a user's scrutiny.

Since the screen is the first thing that attracts users to the Mobilon, we'll start there. It is a standard half VGA screen with a 6.5" diagonal view and is capable of displaying a palette of 256 colors. As dual scan screens go it is fairly sharp, with little ghosting or bleeding. Scrolling speed is painfully slow, primarily due to a still not optimized video display driver.

Bright sunlight is a color screen's enemy, and the effect on the Mobilon is no different. With brightness at its fullest, it is barely useable in direct sunlight. On the other hand, indoor lighting makes the screen shine. Both brightness and contrast are easily adjustable using alt-key combinations, though brightness control is not labeled above the "[ ]" keys as Contrast is above the ", ." keys.

256 color gifs display well on the Sharp, either under Internet Explorer or the included Image Editor software. I found the same pictures on an HP620LX look much worse, as if the unit was only displaying sixteen colors. That may be a driver problem on the HP620LX.

Using the very useful freeware MGColor control panel applet, you can customize most screen colors. This feature is something that should have been included with the WindowsCE operating system by Microsoft.

Unlike the larger HP620LX, the Mobilon is only average in size compared to most other HPCs, with a size of 1.1" x 7.2" x 3.5" and a weight of about 17 ounces, making it the smallest color HPC. This makes the Mobilon suit coat pocketable, though you will definitely know it is there.

The keyboard of the Mobilon is decent, with small keys and large spacing, making it reasonably well suited to fast two finger typing. It still falls short of the best of class Psion 5 keyboard, but beats the Casio A-20 and Velo 500 for feel and efficiency. The keys are very hard plastic, which, while giving positive feedback when pressed, does lend to a feel of a calculator instead of a computer keyboard.

In addition to the full qwerty keyboard and half-sized number keys, the Mobilon has several extra keys. Seven function keys provide one press access to the most used programs built in to the Mobilon, and pressing the alt-function key gives access to seven more functions. The Mobilon also has a screen dim switch which is handy for taking a short break while conserving battery power. The recessed reset button is also on top, which is more convenient than most HPCs which hide the reset button under a battery door.

Like most version 2.0 Windows CE devices, the Mobilon has voice recording capabilities. This can be controlled either by running the included Voice Recorder application, or with the unit closed by pressing and holding the record button on the front of the unit, next to the external microphone. Recording quality is poor and useful for only reminders and other low-quality voice recordings.

Modem: Hard or soft?
Also included in the Mobilon is a 33.6kbps softmodem. This low powered device frees the PC Card slot from a power draining modem. Using the included Pocket Internet Explorer, web surfing and e-mail access capabilities make the Mobilon a much more useful mobile device.

Setting up my Mobilon for Internet access was difficult and unintuitive (though this is an operating system issue, not a Mobilon knock). Eventually, by trial and error, I was able to log on to my ISP. The log-on screen said 28.8Kbps, but the actually speed seemed very slow. Page loading was slow even with the graphics option turned off. My first test site was www.microsoft.com/ windowsce, but Microsoft's servers refused to respond. However www.windowsce. com, a popular Windows CE site, displayed fine and the colors looked as expected from the iconic-based graphics web site.

While not tested, I am sure that text-based e-mail and Usenet browsing would be quicker. If you intend to do some serious web browsing, I would recommend a 56Kbps PC Card modem instead of the built-in modem to maximize throughput. Sharp has released a new initialization string which is said to increase speed by 15-20%, but the real problem is that the softmodem consumes nearly 3/4 of the Mobilon's CPU cycles, slowing down operation of the entire system, including Internet Explorer.

The Mobilon has all of the standard HPC ports, including serial/docking station, A/C adapter, infrared, one PC Card slot (though no compact flash RAM card slot) and a closed unit alarm silencer. The lack of a compact flash RAM card slot means that memory and accessory PC Cards cannot be utilized at the same time, such as a VGA out card or faster modem.

A matter of power
Battery power is via the included rechargeable NiMH battery pack and button battery backup. The unit will accept two standard double AA batteries in a pinch. Battery life is rated at an optimistic four to six hours. The Mobilon lacks a good battery status program, so judging the amount of charge left is difficult. The control panel device offers only good, low, and very low warnings and no tray icon for battery status is available.

The Mobilon does have a special discharge program that will fully discharge the battery. While NiMH batteries do not suffer the same memory effect as NiCads, it still occurs and an occasional full discharge will maximize battery life of the unit. After a full discharge, a recharge takes only about 1.5 hours.

Battery life in actual use varies based on several factors, including whether you use the modem, PC Card slot, bright screen display and voice recording. The modem accelerates battery depletion, and after about 1/2 hour of online time, I only had another hour left before I received a low power warning (I also had a four megabyte PC Card memory card installed at that time).

Some online users have reported battery and charger problems. This includes a flashing charge light, overheating, and even smoke from the unit. The severity of the problem is not clear, but I would not recommend leaving the Mobilon charging overnight to avoid any potential problem.

The Mobilon, as shipped, comes with the unit, one battery, a serial transfer cable, the A/C adapter, and a few bonus programs (a color image editor, Intellimigrate by Puma that transfers older PDA PIM data to the Mobilon and Bfax lite). To obtain a docking station, you must purchase a separate US$150 accessory, which also includes a second battery. The docking station is solidly made and will recharge the second battery while charging the unit. At a list price of US$899 for the unit alone, the exclusion of the docking station is unacceptable. The Manual included with the Mobilon is poor, providing scant detail as to use of the device, other than superficial explanations.

Unit RAM on the Mobilon is 16MB. A two screw door on the base of the unit houses a removable card which contains several chips. The Mobilon is upgradeable to 32MB of RAM, but this part is not available at present. The card may also house the ROM, which would make system upgrades easy to install. This RAM card uses a slightly larger connector than the card in the original 4500, making a simple upgrade of the 4500 out of the question, but Sharp has indicated that they may offer 4500 users a software upgrade at a low cost (but at a loss of system RAM when installed).

The 4600 also ships with two new software programs that were not available for the Mobilon 4500. A PC file viewer allows opening of files not supported by Pocket Word such as Word Perfect files. There is also a simple Mpeg viewer which allows the Mobilon to play small Mpeg-1 files (without sound). The sample files included with the Mobilon ran, but most of the Mpeg files I tried from the Web either did not run or displayed pixelization defects.

One unique option for the Mobilon is the ability to accept a Sharp PC Card digital camera, which utilizes the screen for display of images. The unit offers 640X480 resolution with a 350,000 pixel ccd. Most digital cameras today offer a higher pixel count, but the convenience of the Sharp camera card is a plus. This camera card retails at about US$350 and is a useful option for certain users, especially for filed work where, combined with the modem, a user could easily snap and upload pictures in minutes.

Overall, the Mobilon 4600 is a solid, color HPC and quite useful. Except for a high price and short battery life, I am very impressed with this machine and have adopted the Mobilon as my portable handheld system.