HP Jornada 928: A real box of tricks

We hear a lot about "convergence" – the coming together of things that seemed different. In the 1980s, it meant telecoms and computers, now realised in the internet and the plethora of modems. In the 1990s, it meant computers and higher forms of telecoms, such as phone exchanges. That gave us voicemail. Recently, we've been seeking convergence in handheld devices – between personal digital assistants that can do computing functions, and mobile phones that do the phone stuff and other things so well.

In convergence, one function tends to predominate. The telecoms side is subsumed to the computer function in the internet. The computer dominates again in voicemail (dammit). So shouldn't PDAs be able to absorb mobile phones, and make those functions their own, better than mobiles can take PDA functions – notes, calendars, address books – on board?

Let's try to answer this by looking at the HP Jornada 928, likely to be the last in the prestigious Jornada line of PDAs. After HP (aka Hewlett-Packard) finally merged with Compaq last year, the company had to decide whether to continue with its iPaq (from Compaq) line or Jornada. For reasons that aren't entirely clear, especially given the complaints there have been about the iPaq's design faults, they decided to axe the Jornada. But not before getting the 928 – or, as it should properly be called, the Jornada 928 WDA, for "Wireless Digital Assistant" – out of the door.

First impressions are positive: it's a sleek, fairly light (sub-200g) device. Two tabs at the top let you accept and end phone calls without opening the cover, while an LCD display shows signal strength and battery level. It connects to a PC via a USB cradle that is also a recharger.

Open the cover and the trouble begins. The Jornada runs Microsoft's PocketPC operating system. It's like the mini-me to Windows 98, start bar and all. It's also, I think, confusing as hell, especially when mated, as the Jornada is, with a phone capable of GSM and GPRS (the higher-speed packet-based data or voice system). Why? Because PocketPC can't seem to decide how much of the time you'll want a phone, and how much a PDA. You want to dial a new number quickly? Just open the cover, press a button, find the right dialling screen, get out the stylus (or risk prodding the wrong button), and dial. Or use the voice-recognition software, but that's even slower. I'd rather use a real phone.

But no, you're saying, the Jornada and its PocketPC ilk are intended for people on the go, who want to be able to surf the web and do e-mail and take pictures (there's a neat add-on digital camera) on the move, without the hassle of booting up laptops.

All through my testing, I suspected that the Jornada was meant for people who would use it in a completely different way from me. But how? A friend has one of the 02 XDAs, another PocketPC PDA with phone functionality built in. He's an IT professional: he wants to manage e-mail, do voice calls, and deal with his websites – say, when he's abroad – by using tools such as telnet (remote login via the internet). His opinion of PocketPC? He wants to wipe it and install Linux. Which makes me think I'm not entirely mad in finding PocketPC an annoying operating system. Lack of familiarity could be the reason, but I've used enough operating systems over the years to know that one shouldn't find oneself standing in the middle of the room saying "No! Go back to the previous screen, not off to that one!" more than two or three times. It's a problem I didn't have with the Palm OS. Sure, that's a limited, clunky thing that doesn't have many bells or whistles. Then again, nor does a pen and paper, but those are still the tools of my recording trade, not a voice-activated digital recorder.

The question I kept asking was: what things could you do only with this product, where you need the phone functionality bolted on to the PDA, where you need the power of this PDA to do remote work but don't have or want a real PC? I couldn't think of any. So who is this aimed at?

Apart from PocketPC, which isn't HP's fault (entirely; though they could have tried a form of Linux, as Sharp has done), my other quarrel with the Jornada was battery life. To some extent that isn't HP's fault either, as the demands of the operating system can have a huge impact on battery life, or lack of it. And frankly, the battery life is dire compared to a standard mobile phone or non-phone PDA. You'll get about four hours of actual use from it (possibly less if the screen is bright) before needing to recharge; in real life, probably a business day. Compare that to the week-long standby you'll get from a mobile phone, and it's clear that the PocketPC hordes are intended never to be far from a mains.

So why not have a laptop and a mobile phone? It's clear that convergence can only go so far. Vive la différence: divergence is here, and healthy.