Fujitsu Siemens Pocket LOOX 600 review

Fujitsu-Siemens is not unknown to Windows CE users, although their devices have never gained a substantial market share (interestingly, some of their devices were developed by the former Fujitsu company, others by Siemens). The first PDA they produced together, Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket LOOX 600, suggests that they could find their place in the sun, even though the competition is getting ever tougher. I’d like to thank Sunnysoft for providing the device for this review.

What’s in the box?

Opening the box, I was surprised to find a wealth of accessories. Well, a newcomer to the market must offer something extra. Hmm, let’s see:

• Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket LOOX 600
• Cradle
• USB synchronisation cable
• Two-part power cable with plugs for Europe and the UK
• Protection bag
• Extra stylus
• 3 CD-ROMs
• A quick-start guide
• Warranty information
• Safety information booklet

The cradle is quite robust and stable. I was pleased to find out, that the synchronisation cable and the cradle are detachable. You can either use them together and place LOOX in the cradle or use the cable only, something travelling users will find extremely convenient. A serial cable is not supplied and there is no mention of it on the manufacturer’s website either. It is possible that it will not be available at all.

Fujitsu-Siemens follow the good habit of supplying a spare stylus. Although the main benefit of having a spare stylus is apparent, it is also very convenient in everyday use. I keep the cradle and the spare stylus at work and it can hardly happen that I would arrive at home with my PDA but without a stylus.

If you are afraid of damaging your LOOX, use the supplied protection bag. Unfortunately, it does not have anything to attach it to your belt, like most other housings supplied with PDAs. It is protected though against accidental opening. Well, you’d better check the photo.

The box contains several booklets. Nevertheless, you won’t find any detailed information about your device in them. The first one contains very basic information for absolute PocketPC beginners, the second one gives warranty details, and the third is devoted to safe use of a PocketPC device. Nothing really exciting.

Parameters and design

At first sight, LOOX looks quite chic. In no way is it a “brick”, all corners are rounded so that fits in the hand perfectly (left hand that is; it is slightly more difficult to operate LOOX while holding it in the right hand). The body is all plastic, making the device light but seemingly more vulnerable. The size is not exceptional - see photo for comparison.

Pocket PC	Dimensions (in. / mm)	Weight (oz / g)
Casio Cassiopeia E-200	3.2 x 5.2 x 0.7 82 x 130 x 17.5	6.5 190
Compaq iPAQ H3870	3.3 x 5.3 x 0.6 84 x 133 x 15.9	6.6 190
Compaq iPAQ H3970	3.3 x 5.3 x 0.6 84 x 134 x 15.9	6.5 184
F-S Pocket LOOX 600	3.2" x 5.2" x 0.65" 82 x 132 x 17	6.1 175
HP Jornada 568	3.0 x 5.2 x 0.7 84 x 130 x 18	6.1 173
Toshiba e310	3.1" x 4.9" x 0.4" 80 x 125 x 12.4	4.9 140
Toshiba e740	3.1" x 4.9" x 0.6" 80 x 125 x 15.2	6.1 179

Besides the display, the front panel carries a power switch, a status LED indicating various events, such as battery charging, calendar events etc., a light intensity sensor which automatically adjusts the backlight, speaker, and a joypad with four customisable application buttons. By default, these are used to launch the Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks, the remaining one will switch to the Today screen (finally a manufacturer who thinks the same way as users do!) This button can have different functions for short and long press. A soft reset button is on the back - actually, the only reason to look there.

Now, let's explore the other sides of LOOX. On the top, you will find a plug protecting a slot for Compact Flash card type I or II, a headphones connector and the stylus. Like in iPAQ, you have to press it a little to eject. However, the spring mechanism is not fine-tuned; I often had problems getting the stylus out...

Controls on the left side are designed for comfortable operation with the left thumb. There is a soft key configurable for short and long press and a 3-way scroll wheel (up, down, enter). Besides these, there is an MMC/SD card slot (memory only), and an IrDA port. I was rather disappointed to find no plug on the MMC/SD slot - it is a gate for all kinds of dirt to get inside the device.

The bottom side hosts a synchronisation cable/cradle connector, power jack, battery operation mode switch, and a plug-on module connector (secondary battery, GSM/GPRS module etc.).

Finally, on the right side, you will find a voice record button and a Bluetooth switch. I welcome this solution because only this way you can be 100 % sure Bluetooth is inactive. You’ll appreciate it in situations when Bluetooth activity (even accidental) could have negative consequences for you. What you may miss is an elegant blue LED, but it is not really important.

Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket LOOX 600 is powered by the fastest PDA processor currently available - Intel PXA250 (XScale) running at 400MHz. The clock can be slowed down to make the battery last longer using a software application. However, the difference is not very significant... As far as memory is concerned, LOOX has nothing to surprise with. 64MB of RAM is a standard in this category, as is 32MB of flash ROM. What is surprising is that after a hard reset, the system reports maximum memory less than 64MB... I have had the same experience with Toshiba; it's hard to tell why.

Benchmark tests with the VOBenchmark utility by Virtual Office Systems showed the following results:

Test	LOOX 600	iPAQ H3970
CPU: Floating Point	12.63	12.66
CPU: Integer	26.94	26.98
Graphics: Bitmaps - BitBlt	49.25	26.74
Graphics: Bitmaps - StretchBlt	0.95	0.79
Graphics: Filled - Ellipse	2.40	0.51
Graphics: Filled - Rectangle	4.27	2.11
Graphics: Filled - Rounded Rectangle	1.76	0.51
Memory: Allocation	10.70	10.27
Memory: Fill	0.92	0.93
Memory: Move	0.37	0.36
Memory: Storage Card (SD): LRR	0.28	0.60
Memory: Storage Card (SD): LRW	0.02	0.24
Memory: Storage Card (SD): LSR	0.26	1.17
Memory: Storage Card (SD): LSW	0.01	0.30
Memory: Storage Card (SD): SRR	19.92	134.06
Memory: Storage Card (SD): SRW	0.48	0.56
Memory: Storage Card (SD): SSR	12.67	25.84
Memory: Storage Card (SD): SSW	0.61	1.24
Memory: Storage Card (CF): LRR	0.55	0.39
Memory: Storage Card (CF): LRW	0.27	0.26
Memory: Storage Card (CF): LSR	0.53	0.39
Memory: Storage Card (CF): LSW	0.26	0.27
Memory: Storage Card (CF): SRR	14.65	12.26
Memory: Storage Card (CF): SRW	2.63	2.68
Memory: Storage Card (CF): SSR	14.68	12.15
Memory: Storage Card (CF): SSW	6.30	6.01
Text	4.32	3.35

The display is the weakest part of the whole system. There is no point in comparing it to the excellent display of Compaq iPAQ 3970, but it is worse than most other Pocket PCs I have seen. The display is a reflective TFT touch screen with the usual resolution of 240x320 and 65536 colours. Besides its relatively small size (93 mm, 89 mm viewable), it often trembles, especially at high brightness settings (adjustable in eight steps). The display’s contrast is not perfect either. I think it is the same display as that used in Toshiba e570. To sum up - it is usable but there is much room for improvement.

What I found very convenient was the automatic adjustment of display backlight. It is reliable, smooth, I could always read the display clearly. The display’s sensitivity to the touch-pen is also very well tuned - you do not need to exert too much pressure, just push slightly and there you go.

Quite frankly, the sound is not strikingly excellent. The specs are the same as in other Pocket PC devices (mono mike and speaker, stereo headphones output), but it is slightly worse than Compaq iPAQ 3970. The speaker is OK, no top quality, but most other devices are much the same. However, the microphone is remarkably worse. It is sufficient if you want to take voice notes, but if you want to, say, record an interview, you’ll have to opt for a different solution. The headphones output is good, although the level of noise gets higher with the volume.

The battery’s capacity of 1520 mAh is much higher than average. Theoretically, the manufacturer claims, the device could run 12 hours on the battery. I can neither confirm nor refute that because I performed an intensive test. However, LOOX behaved strangely during the test, with system notifications of low or extremely low battery popping up in absolutely impossible intervals so that the only exact figure I have is for full discharge (the device switched off itself). The times are compared with Compaq iPAQ 3970. As you can see, there is something wrong with the power consumption. The iPAQ with a weaker battery can last almost 30 percent longer. In the power-saving mode (marked SM in the table), LOOX lasted some 10 % longer.

	LOOX 600	LOOX 600 (SM)	iPAQ H3970
1st warning	N/A	N/A	104
2nd warning	N/A	N/A	162
Full discharge	135	151	172
Note: time is given in minutes from the beginning of the test

Fujitsu Siemens Pocket LOOX 600 is one of the few pocket devices that have a built-in Bluetooth support. I was successful in connecting LOOX to both a mobile phone and iPAQ. There were no problems with file and data transfers, although I was disappointed by the slow speed of 1MB in two minutes... A hardware Bluetooth switch is also something that deserves praise. If you do not have another Bluetooth device, you have to use the traditional ways of connecting. USB is a standard today, LOOX offers also the traditional "slow" wireless IrDA.

Expandability

If you find LOOX’s standard configuration insufficient, you can easily expand the device in three different ways. The first one is additional memory for applications and data. The best option seems to be a MMC/SD card because the SD slot does not have full SDIO support so that you cannot use anything else there. It would not be very practical, anyway, considered the slot is on the side and most SDIO cards are bigger than the normal size - it would be difficult to hold the device.

Another option is a Compact Flash card type I or II. There are many to choose from: memory, LAN, GPS, modem... I have become a big GPS fan lately, so I value any PDA that supports CF cards.

And finally, you can expand LOOX by plug-on modules. Technically, the solution is similar to that of iPAQ. Currently, a high-capacity secondary battery pack is available; a GSM/GPRS module is planned for the end of the year. I myself do not like this type of expansion. The initial euphoria over iPAQ jackets was soon over because of their main disadvantage - considerable increase in size and weight of the PDA. Well, many users may still like it.

Software

Besides the standard Pocket PC 2002 applications suite, LOOX offers many more utilities and applications both in the flash ROM and on the companion CD. First, let’s take a look at those stored in the ROM. One of the two most important applications is FSC SpeedMenu which launches applications and switches between them. What makes it really useful is that it works with the scroll button so that you can easily control your LOOX with one hand. Another application that you will find in virtually every Pocket PC is some kind of a backup utility. Here it is called LX-Backup and it can safely backup data and applications to any memory card.

An interesting utility is that for Bluetooth communication called Pocket Plugfree. It is slightly more powerful than iPAQ’s solution. Its detailed description would fill several pages, so let me introduce it just briefly: you can easily share files, exchange calendar events, contacts, notes etc. You can make full use of all its features only when communicating with another LOOX or other device running the same application.

Some of the control panel applets in LOOX are adapted for specific needs, such as processor clock adjustment, backlight control, and plug-on module status monitor. An extra skin for the Today screen is quite likeable; I have never seen anything like that before.

The companion CD contains several interesting and useful utilities. Before you can try them, you have to install ActiveSync and connect the device to the desktop. There is a slight problem with the desktop not recognising a new device - it does not have the proper driver. Everything works well after you install WCEUSBSH.INF from the CD.

In the first place, I’d like to mention an excellent fax application called KSE TrueFax. LOOX is meant to be an alternative to iPAQ for the corporate sphere - sending and receiving faxes is one of the basic needs of all businessmen and managers. Another application, perhaps one of the most popular, is Pocket Informant. Many users find the built-in PIM apps (calendar, contacts, tasks) as absolutely insufficient and look for something better. Pocket Informant is definitely worth trying. It has undergone many years of development so that it is highly intuitive and can save a lot of time.

Nyditot Virtual Display 3.0 is also included on the CD. This utility extends the resolution of your device to up to 2040x2080 pixels. If you have a mobile phone, you will surely find use for Message Master Mobile Client from Derdack. It can manage your mobile contacts, send and receive SMS messages and do many other interesting things with your mobile. Westtek ClearVue displays PowerPoint presentations and other MS Office documents. If security is your concern, then you should install F-Secure FileCrypto. It encrypts files so that you’ll never have to worry about your sensitive data even if you lose your PDA.

Finally, I’d like to mention space2go Organizer. It requires a registration which I did not want to send, being just a reviewer of a borrowed LOOX. If I understand it well, it is an application for storing data on a web server for retrieval from anywhere. Price includes 25MB of storage space, you can buy more.

Overall, the package of bonus applications is well balanced to give the user convenient tools that are worth using.

Evaluation

What's in the box?	Total satisfaction, I’d say: a spare stylus, the possibility to use the synchronisation cable either with the cradle or on its own, protection bag...
Parameters and design	Many weak points, the display is small and quite bad, the battery does not last very long despite its big capacity, average size and weight.
Expandability	Just excellent. Besides an integrated Bluetooth module, you can expand your device in three other ways - using MMC/SD memory cards, Compact Flash cards type I and II, as well as plug-on modules like those used with Compaq (extra battery pack, GSM/GPRS, etc.).
Applications	A nice package of bonus applications, selected not just to count but to provide extra value. Some of them will surely come handy to every LOOX user.
Value	As far as the price is concerned, LOOX is positioned slightly below iPAQ H3970, yet it is not a cheap device. For your money, you get many accessories as well as a package of useful software.

Article rating - (102 votes)