I have just completed my review of the HP HW6500 series mobile messenger. You may want to have a look at it as BB Connect may be available for it soon. (just a rumor).

If BB Connect comes out for this device I'm sold and will get 5 other for my team. We'll probably wait for thr 6715 though.

So far i am very sold on the device. My Blackberry is sitting in a drawer. I find the polled email to be more consistent thatn the BB push email as I have seen times when the push email took forever to get to my handheld. I would like BB Connect only because my employer uses the Blackberry Server. I actually prefer the email I get from my regular POP account because my attachments are viewable without conversion and look like they would on the PC. I can reach my work email with this unit (after installing my PKI cert) via Outlook Web and I cannot do that on a Blackberry because the browser doesn't support frames. Further since the unit supports EDGE it is fast even with the native browser Pocket IE and I suspect it will be faster with Opera mini.

My company has a BES server too which is why I want BB Connect. I'm not sure if we will upgrade to Exchange SP2 to get the Push Mail included with that. We have some 15,000 employees so these sort of changes are not small. I have to go with what we have and at the moment it is Blackberry. We do have OWA though so good to know the HP can work with that ok.

It works well with it, even those services that require certificates.

Over at engadgets I heared this phone might be recalled. Looks like a true successor to the hp6315

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000513057834/

I don't think the rumor is valid as this device is probably the best converged device on the market today. Add WM5 and it will stay a competitive device. GPS works very well matching the unit in my Lexus.

This rumor may have some teeth as it is being reported over on Pocket PC Thoughts as well that the6515 may be recalled, ironically, for flaw in the GPS.

They also state that the 6515 and possibly even the 6715 won't support Windows Mobile 5.

After what happened to tmobile with hp6315 i suspect this kind of rumor being correct won't be very surprising. I also read a review of this product in pcmag a while back where they said "Unfortunately, bugs and incompatibilities with some Pocket PC software plagued our preproduction unit and left us troubled". Many users at Pocket PC Thoughts also express similar ("nightmare") views. Here is what one user's view of the unit over at Pocket Thought,

"- Memory on the device is so tight, that Tomtom crashes every time you go to the Points-of-Interest menu.
- Battery life is ridiculous. Less then a day on a full charge. Which makes it practically useless as a phone.
- Battery drain with GPS switched on is even more ridiculous. It draws more power then the cigarette lighter can give it. So we were driving through France with the device plugged in and it would still give low battery messages and even turn off completely. The only solution was to turn off the backlight, so that we could keep navigating.
- Most of the times it took two minutes to get a GPS fix, sometimes it would not get a GPS fix at all. Soft resetting the device was usually the only remedy. I also had to hard reset it twice to get things working again."

But either way we should wait for hp to clarify if this is indeed true.

My review is based on having purchased a production unit and living with it and testing it for a month. I can tell you that it is accurate and honest. Yes, there are some incompatibilities with sfotware that was not designed for a square screen but that can be overcome with a third party application Nyditot that creates a virtual 240x320 screen. I haven't found this one issue to be a deal breaker and I suspect the same thing will be true for WM5 as developers often use shortcuts and don't follow the rules of the API. For additional information go to www.davesipaq.com where you can find informationn from real users. By the way many of the users have owned the 6300 series and say there is no comparison between the products.

I hope this rumor isn't true. I really want the 6715 with WM5.

It will only be fair if I also post this. Engadgets today have said some people at hp could confirm that this rumor has no substance.

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000663058110/

My boss carries the HP iPAQ hw6515 from Cingular. He just asked me to get him an 8700c from Cingular so that it will work with our BES server. I spent a few days trying to get Exchange 2003 w/ SP2 to run moblie mail with no luck. The biggest issue was Active Sync wants a password to match what is in active directory and that is not possible here because we use CRYPTO-card tokens for passwords. Anyways, for email, contacts and calander, you can't beat the BlackBerry devices...imo