The Dolphin 7900 is Hand Held Products’ industrialized PDA. If you have field service personnel, direct store delivery drivers, or long haul drivers who need to carry all of their customer data, and catalog information, inventory, invoices, cell phone, calendar and email in a medium sized device built to survive the rough stuff, this is the guy for you. The unit I tested included the following features:

• 3.8 inch QVGA screen
• 2D image capture scanner & camera
• cell phone
• 802.11 transceiver
• alpha numeric or full QWERTY keyboards.
• 64 megs of RAM standard, 128 meg available 
• 64 megs of Flash storage standard, 128 megs available.
• Intel X-Scale PXA255 400MHz Processor

   

Physically, the 7900 is larger than other entries in this space. Everything is bigger. And that's both a good thing... and a bad thing. The good: This unit is very rugged--think Incredible Hulk. The bad: It's heavy. It's large. It doesn't fit well in your coat pocket, so I'm not recommending this one for your Armani suited sales force. However, if your drivers seem to think you give them handheld computers just to wedge open doors, then this bad boy is designed to deal. HHP calls it an "industrial PDA." It's also got one of the best batteries we've seen. More on that later. A detailed data sheet is available here.  HHP also makes a wide selection of accessories, including cradles, truck mounted cradles, card readers, and the like.

The Dolphin's scanner is an area imager that seamlessly scans both 1D and 2D barcodes. The imager is fast (so fast, I call it the 'machine gun scanner'), it's accurate, and you can adjust the aiming point down to the pixel, so its easy to pick out a specific barcode from a group. Testing the unit with our own Mobiquity Route ^TM software, I found that I could build an order by simply holding the scan button down and move from one barcode to the next. (In any of our solutions, a second scan event on an existing UPC code increments the item quantity by one, so if you are adding a quantity of five or less, it's just faster to hold down the scan button and count the beeps.)  If you have a need to capture images, the scanner is also a black and white, low resolution camera. You won't take great pictures with it, but you will be able to document damaged containers, or capture paper signatures. HHP struck a good balance with their imagers. I can't understand why some other manufactures make you choose between a scanner or a camera.

The unit I tested has the 24-key numeric keypad, which is perfect for entering mostly numeric values. If your application requires a lot of text entry, however, you’ll want to choose the full QWERTY version. The screen is large, at 3.8 inch QVGA, it's the largest screen in this category. Its transflective technology is especially readable in bright sunshine. Even applications that are not designed with high contrast screens are easy to read. True, on a side by side, indoors comparison with a transmissive screen, the colors are less vibrant, but this does not impair readability.

At 7.3 inches long, 3.5 inches wide and 1.7 inches deep, and over a pound (between 17 and 19 ounces, depending on the features) the 7900 is the largest in this class. Ergonomically, its rounded body is easy to grip for large hands like mine, and one handed operation of the scanner is comfortable. The adjustable hand strap is sturdy and well made, which is good, because it doesn't look like it's especially easy to replace. The stylus isn't going anywhere because it's attached with a coiled nylon coated wire cable. In fact everything about this unit is built with survivability in mind.

Survivable? This unit looks indestructible. Take the battery out, and you find a seamless battery well that looks a miniature bath tub. The spring loaded battery terminals extend through an opening that has a thick rubber seal. The card storage hatch is also protected by a rubber seal, and secured with screws. HHP doesn't claim this unit is for underwater use, but it certainly looks like it could be. It's tested (by an independent lab) to survive multiple 5 foot drops to concrete.  It also carries an IP64 rating. This means that it's sealed shell will keep out the smallest particles of dust, and protect the electronics from water sprayed from any direction. Think howling dust storm followed by torrential rains.
 
Unlike other Windows Mobile 5 devices, the cell phone is not accessed by pressing the phone key. It doesn't have a phone key. It doesn't use the standard WM5 dialer. You'll find HHP's proprietary dialer under Programs in the Start menu. HHP says they didn't have confidence in the WM5 dialer, so they used their own legacy software. Lame. What's not lame however, is the call quality. Here's another example of HHP doing the right thing: they put the phone speaker on the front of the unit! Right where logic would dictate it. Other manufacturers tend to place it on the back of the unit, and in one case, right under the users hand. In all environments I was able to hear clearly in handset mode, and all but the very noisiest in speaker mode. The microphone utilizes sound dampening technology, which effectively distinguished between my voice and background noise, even loud diesel engine noise.  As for data transmission, I had no problems with communications over GPRS.

And now for the big question: how did the battery do? Fantastic! HHP calls their battery management "Shift-Plus." That means a single charge should last your entire shift with room to spare. I believe them. In fact, if I were writing their sales materials, I'd have called it "Double Shift Plus." Even with all features included the 7900 enabled, (scanner, Bluetooth, cell phone, 802.11) this unit took on our standard test day, plus the extra 1000 scans, and it did it with 74% battery life left over! WOW! The Lithium-ion 7.4 V, 14.8 watt-hour battery is the only battery HHP sells for this unit.  Whereas other manufactures have a standard version and an extended version, HHP gives you the extended version right off the bat.

In closing, while your white collar sales force won't love it's size and weight, your blue collar drivers and warehouse workers will appreciate it's durability and long battery life.

Brett Birdsong
Sr. Editor