Test Shows Tungsten T & C Outperform iPaq

Palm recently commission and independent testing lab to compare the Palm Tungsten T and C against, the HP iPAQ h1910 and h5450. The test compared battery life, wireless speed, storage efficiency and document handling. The results showed Palm Tungsten handhelds equaled or outperformed HP Pocket PC devices in all tests.

Palm commissioned VeriTest, formerly known as ZD Labs and eTesting Labs, the testing division of Lionbridge Technologies, Inc., to compare battery life, time to data loss after handheld power failure, wireless download speed, storage efficiency, and document handling for the Palm Tungsten T handheld, the Palm Tungsten C handheld, the HP iPAQ h1910 and the HP iPAQ h5450.

The results of the test are as follows:

• Battery Life
  The Palm handhelds equaled or outperformed the HP iPAQ devices in all battery-life tests. The Tungsten C handheld posted the highest battery-life scores, including slightly more than eight hours of run-time at full screen brightness. The Tungsten C handheld lasted one hour and 35 minutes longer than the HP iPAQ h5450 in 802.11b wireless battery-life tests.

• Time to Data Loss After Handheld Power Failure
  The Palm handhelds maintained user data for significantly longer than the iPAQ devices after a power failure in stand-by mode, which causes the units to shut themselves off and remain in their powered-off states. The Tungsten T handheld lasted for 21 days, five times longer than the HP iPAQ h5450, which lasted only four days, in a time to data loss test.

• Wireless Download Speed
  The Tungsten C handheld was more than twice as fast as the HP iPAQ h5450 in a web page download test, loading the test page in 11.69 seconds as compared to 28.02 seconds for the iPAQ.

• Storage Efficiency
  Storing a set of contacts, appointments and documents revealed little difference in overall storage efficiency of the handhelds. However, the document sizes on the Palm handhelds were significantly smaller than the equivalent documents on the HP iPAQ devices, with no difference in document formatting or content loss.

• Document Handling
  In previous document-handling tests, Palm handhelds with DataViz Documents To Go performed far better than the built-in software in Pocket PC devices for handling Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. For example, Documents To Go, which is included with the Palm Tungsten handhelds, allows Palm handheld users to synchronize and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files with confidence, knowing that synchronization back to the desktop will retain the integrity of the original document. Fonts and formats generally are preserved. (Use of Microsoft's PocketWord and PocketExcel for the Pocket PC platform can result in lost fonts, degradation of image resolution and lost headers, tables, and charts.)

The full 10 page report can be found here in pdf format.

Source: Palm Inc Press release