PDA Buyer's Guide Reviews ViewSonic V35 Pocket PC 2002

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.pdabuyersguide.com/viewsonic_V35.htm' target='_blank'>http://www.pdabuyersguide.com/viewsonic_V35.htm</a><br /><br /></div>Well, despite my begging and pleading with Viewsonic, PDA Buyer's Guide beat me to it: the first real review of the V35. I don't consider the regurgitated press releases at CNET to be real reviews. :roll: How did the Viewsonic fare? Quite well!<br /><br />"<b>Pro:</b> The cheapest new Pocket PC 2002 PDA available today (though the iPAQ 1910 and Dell Pocket PC will soon share that honor). This PDA allows more people to get into a new Pocket PC 2002 PDA. Very slim and the lightest PPC on the market! Zippy performance and an excellent transreflective display that's bright, color-saturated and evenly lit. D-pad is good for gamers and non-gamers alike. 64 megs of RAM, now the industry standard, gives you room to install 3rd party software. <br /><br /><b>Con:</b> No CF card slot for cheaper CF memory cards, and modem and network cards. You do get an SD slot. Not as fast as 400MHz XScale Pocket PCs, and one of the slower units in our benchmarks, but a solid performer nonetheless."

[Paragon]

According to the benchmarks it is considerably slower than the Toshiba e330, the only other 300mhz. I find benchmarks a little misleading though. Nothing beats firsthand experience, to see how it feels.

When you finish begging Jason, let us know how you feel about it's speed.

Dave

[Boxster S]

According to the benchmarks it is considerably slower than the Toshiba e330, the only other 300mhz. I find benchmarks a little misleading though. Nothing beats firsthand experience, to see how it feels.

When you finish begging Jason, let us know how you feel about it's speed.

Dave

Yeah, benchmarks on PDA's mean nothing to me, I'm all about how it actually works when I use it. This statement proves that:

higher end Pocket PCs such as the iPAQ 3900 and Toshiba e740 have XScale processors running at 400MHz, I didn't feel that the 300MHz V35 was slow. It benchmarks numbers are not exciting, but it feels plenty fast (see table below). Note that while Toshiba PPCs perform very well on graphics benchmarks, their real world performance is not superior.

[Boxster S]

Three more interesting quotes:

Battery life has been very good so far in auto mode, outlasting the Toshiba models and getting about 85% of the runtime our iPAQ 3970 gets in a mix of gaming, contacts/calendar access, movie playback and MP3 playback.


As mentioned, the display is fantastic! I think the iPAQ 3900 edges it out, but you must put them side by side to really notice a difference. The colors are a bit more vibrant on the iPAQ 3900, but of course, it costs a few hundred dollars more. The speaker is quite loud, and the headphone sound is on par with other Pocket PCs: very good.

The round directional pad is great for gaming: it gives good feedback and control, and allows for fluid movement in any direction.

That settles it, this is definitely the PocketPC for me...well, I pre-ordered it last month from Amazon so I guess it was already settled for me :lol:

[Paul P]

According to the benchmarks it is considerably slower than the Toshiba e330, the only other 300mhz. I find benchmarks a little misleading though.
Dave

I don't even know what most of these benmarks mean. Is there an explanation somewhere? :)

[Paragon]

According to the benchmarks it is considerably slower than the Toshiba e330, the only other 300mhz. I find benchmarks a little misleading though.
Dave

I don't even know what most of these benmarks mean. Is there an explanation somewhere? :)

Ha! I think that's part of my problem too, Paul. I don't have a clue what most benchmarks mean.

Dave

[mv]

Well, if 300mhz xscale is not too fast... the ipaq 1900 will be very slow!!
Anyway this article says "transreflective" instead of "transflective"

[Jason Dunn]

Anyway this article says "transreflective" instead of "transflective"

Forget all that jargon: back-lit or side-lit is the real factor. This is back-lit, which means NICE quality. :D

[ThomasC22]

I don't even know what most of these benmarks mean. Is there an explanation somewhere? :)

Well, I'm not sure if this is what you meant, but part of my problem with PocketPC benchmarks is that it doesn't really translate into any real performance for the user.

Sort of like measuring 2D performance on a video card, sure one video card might have better performance than another, but the user isn't going to notice the difference.

Same here, there are NO games that I know of that run significantly better on one PDA than they do on the other (At least performance wise), your average PDA apps don't either, and where they may be a slight argument in the area of video apps the fact remains PocketTV still works just fine on my iPaq 3650.

Bottom line, I'm not sure you should make your PDA decision based on benchmark performance.

[szamot]

Too bad Jason you could not get one but I know for a fact that there are 3 units in Canada right now, 2 are being evaluated by the government, no doubt spending our money already, and the 3rd has not power adapter. In any event, if there is god, Thoughts will have its own review soon as well, if it still matters.

[szamot]

I don't even know what most of these benmarks mean. Is there an explanation somewhere? :)

Well, I'm not sure if this is what you meant, but part of my problem with PocketPC benchmarks is that it doesn't really translate into any real performance for the user.

Sort of like measuring 2D performance on a video card, sure one video card might have better performance than another, but the user isn't going to notice the difference.

Same here, there are NO games that I know of that run significantly better on one PDA than they do on the other (At least performance wise), your average PDA apps don't either, and where they may be a slight argument in the area of video apps the fact remains PocketTV still works just fine on my iPaq 3650.

Bottom line, I'm not sure you should make your PDA decision based on benchmark performance.

I agree with you, it is like going and buying a stereo in the store based on its total harmonic distortion test results, they mean fudge all, you have to be able to work and live with it to know if you will or will not like it. The only difference I could tell with games is when I played Lemonade on the overclocked 3850 and the e740. Not that the game run faster but it did load a lot faster - so what, I gave up the e740 because its wireless was useless for stumbling purposes, which I will have you kids know it perfectly legal in CANADA eh.

[Rirath]

I'd say most people problems with the bench results were they simply didn't undertstand them. Congrats to the team for doing them anyhow, we need more specs like this! If anything though, the movie clip benchmarks were the most useful real world wise. They probably should have ran a few more similar tests like an emulator.

[TomB]

Well, from these benchmarks and my real world experience with the e310 and e335, I would say that the next generation of PDAs is a multimedia miss. Knowing that the lowly iPaq 3650 will do close to 24fps with MPEG1 at 600kbs and a resolution over twice as large as the ones tested in this review I would say we have a grand case of "The Emperor's New Cloths." I can't figure why OEMs and Microsoft would allow this huge step backward to happen. I know Microsoft is claiming their policy can only support one processor at a time - and I know that OEMs feel they must move forward, but it seems that this lack of vision and cooperation is going to kill the PPC. This is a sad day for PDA users!

[Thunderstruck]

I have been trying to decide which one to get: the V35 or the e330. Toshiba has a great reputation in my book (I have been using Toshiba notebooks for years), however it looks like the e330 only has 32Mb of RAM, while the V35 has 64Mb. With the better screen, it looks like I will go with the V35.

[enemy2k2]

however it looks like the e330 only has 32Mb of RAM, while the V35 has 64Mb. With the better screen, it looks like I will go with the V35.

The Toshiba E-310 had 32MB of RAM the E-330 is upgraded to 64MB. I'm really curious to see what these new screens look like, I remember the screen on the E-310 as being excellent both lit or unlit. Guess I'll just have to wait until I get get my Dell to see;)

[pdagal]

While the V35 doesn't do great on benchmarks, experientally it feels speedy enough. Note that the Toshibas do well on graphics in benchmarks thanks to their nifty graphics chip, but the Pocket PC OS doesn't take advantage of this chip so it doesn't perform any faster in real world use!

It's weird: with PC benchmarks, our perception of performance correlates strongly with benchmark results. With the newest Pocket PCs, this isn't always the case. One of the reasons is the fact that Pocket PC 2002 OS doesn't take advantage of the new XScale processors. They must run in emulation, pretending to be StrongARM processors. If the OS and apps were running natively (compiled for XScale) then the benchmarks would likely reflect our sense of real world speed. Back in the days when we were benchmarking the iPAQ 3600 vs. the Jornada 540 vs the Casio E-125, the benchmarks really told you which would feel faster in your hand! Now, I'm afraid we'll have to wait for a native XScale OS and support for a wider array of graphics chips to feel the differences the benchmarks show.


According to the benchmarks it is considerably slower than the Toshiba e330, the only other 300mhz. I find benchmarks a little misleading though. Nothing beats firsthand experience, to see how it feels.

When you finish begging Jason, let us know how you feel about it's speed.

Dave

[jeasher]

So does anyone have any additional info as to when this device will become available? Best Buy and Circuit City has it skued in their system but they don't know when they're getting it. Amazon just dropped it from their site. I have seen a release date of 12/1/02 but I'm not sure I trust it. Anyone? I want this PDA!

[ThomasC22]

So does anyone have any additional info as to when this device will become available? Best Buy and Circuit City has it skued in their system but they don't know when they're getting it. Amazon just dropped it from their site. I have seen a release date of 12/1/02 but I'm not sure I trust it. Anyone? I want this PDA!

From what I've been told, Amazon was given a release date for the V35 which has apparently already passed (significantly passed I was told but this same person couldn't tell me when it was which makes me wonder how he knew it was significantly).

Therefore, Amazon not being entirely sure when it's coming out has pulled it for the time being. This seems to indicate, as everyone else suspects, that there is some kind of manufacturing problem but at the same type there seem to be a decent amount of review units out there so I doubt the problems are all that bad.

[Kirkaiya]

In lieu of pure speculation from unnamed sources, hopefully we'll hear from someone who has reputable info from Viewsonic. The people at Amazon are unlikely to know anything, since this is just one of thousands of products they carry.

I think that when Jason, or another site administrator here, or at CNet, or another media outlet gets any news, they'll dish it out. If anyone knows somebody in Viewsonic's Mobile & Wireless division, of course, let us know ;-)

One thing about pocketpcthoughts is that the accurate news seems to break here first, so .... as much as I hate waiting for my V35, I guess I will (for now).