PDA Reviews

Toshiba has been making Pocket PCs for a long time now. Here we review about e405, a pocket PC PDA of Toshiba which was released in the end of the year 2003. This model was released along with another model, Toshiba e805.

Until the release of this unit, Toshiba was suffering comments on their other PDAs like “unrounded silver rectangular units that lacked style” and “ the only PDA that had SDIO slots that are not compatible with SD WiFi cards”. With Pocket PC e405, Toshiba managed to overcome most of its disadvantages with a happy note.

Design:

The Toshiba e405 Pocket PC PDA had some style factor added to it. It has surprisingly come out in a metallic blue casing. The unit is very slim and light. The inset hard plastic grips are textured lightly and gives a good grip of the PDA in your hands. A glossy black plastic wraps around top of the unit’s screen.

Display:

Toshiba e405 Pocket Computer has an excellent 3.5″ transflective display. The display is bright enough and its colours are saturated and sharp. There is not any specific colour that is dominating and it is a pleasure to watch images and videos in the display. The brightness settings had ten gradations. In order to save the battery charge, the Pocket PC automatically adjusts the brightness of the display according to the amount of battery charge left. Which means the screen is kept at 50% brightness by default when there is enough charge. The 3.5 inch display dominated the entire PDA and had the so called “X-Factor”.

Buttons and ports:

The stylus is placed on the upper right corner of the pocket PC. It has the smallest power button ever in a PDA on its top left corner. There is a LED which glows either amber or green indicating the status of the battery charge. If the battery does not require any charging for any time soon, then the LED stays green, and when you will be running low of the charge, the LED glows amber. This is as you must have thought, a very handy feature. The record button is present on the upper left side, and just below it is the jog or action dial which when pressed, launches a highlighted application. The IR port is located in the lower left side just below the hold slider switch . The right side of the unit is empty while the headphone jack and the SD slot are placed on the top edge.

Toshiba e405 PDA was the one it first have the d-pad. It was a large five way square d-pad surrounded closely by the four standard application buttons. It moves without any discomfort in all the directions. The task and calendar buttons are made to look like a single button, connected by a thin band. But, they do act separately and simultaneously during gaming. The d-pad does not respond quickly, and this can be observed well during playing games which requires immediate responses.

The home button does nothing! Yes nothing! Hence, you will have to assign it to one of the most often used applications, so that you can land on it without any trouble.

The processor:

The e405 Pocket PC from Toshiba uses the Intel Xscale PXA261 processor which runs at 300 Mhz. This is quiet good for a budget PDA. The performance of the processor is good when tested with the gaming and video playback applications.

Memory:

It has 64MB of internal RAM out of which 62MB is free for your use. The operating system consumes 10MB of memory. Additionally, the pocket PC has 32MB of non-volatile NAND flash ROM which can be used to store data, backups and programs. The content of the flash ROM is permanent and will not be erased even when you do a hard reset to your PDA.

The IR port and the SD slot that supports SDIO fulfils your expansion needs. The SD slot goes well with the sandisk and socket SD WiFi cards.

The operating system:

The operating system used by e405 is, Pocket PC 2003 Professional edition which has lesser number of features than that of the Pocket PC 2003 Premium edition. The absent features include MS Reader, Image programs and Terminal services. However, the MS reader applications can be installed separately on yourself.

Video and audio playback:

The video playback is quiet decent at 23.95 frames per second. Yet, it was not able to live up to the quality of HP iPAQ Pocket PCs [read reviews of HP iPAQ 114, HP iPAQ 214]. Audio again was just satisfactory. While playing multimedia too, the audio was loud and decent, but was not up to the standards of HP iPAQs. Alternatively you may use the head phone provided that is to be connected to the 3.5mm headphone jack, the audio via the headphone is much better.

The interesting and entertaining voice recorder application is available. The Toshiba e405 Handheld PDA also has in it an Audio Control Panel applet which allows you to adjust the microphone EQ for Conference recording, Short Range recording and Normal recordings. The volume of the headphone can also be set independent to the volume of the speaker. The right and left side volumes of the headphone can also be set individually.

The voice command and text to speech applications:

As we mentioned earlier, Toshiba’s e405 and e805 are the first ever pocket PCs to come with the voice command and text to speech applications. All that you will have to do is, install these applications from the CDROM that is provided, both together takes about 6MB of memory. The voice command application button is assigned to the record button, and once you press it, the unit beeps and then you will have to pronounce your command to with the e405 would respond. In case the device does not understand your command, it gives a drum beat sound. Mostly, it had no problem in understanding the commands and it accepts a long list of commands.

The text to speech comprises of three applications. Mail speech, text speech and speech settings. The mail speech reads your mails aloud including the sender and subject. The text speech reads the text files up to 32KB in size.

Softwares included:

Since the Toshiba e405 is a budget Pocket PC, it does not come with a significant 3rd party software bundle. However it does come with a nice selection of Toshiba’s own applications. Toshiba’s backup program allows you to back up the to either internal flash ROM or an SD storage card and Toshiba also includes their World Clock application, which allows you to track the time and date in your home city and two others. With the exception of the voice command and speech applications, all Toshiba applications are pre-installed in ROM. In addition, you will get the standard Windows Mobile 2003 applications pre-installed in ROM. These include Pocket versions of Internet Explorer, Word, Excel, Outlook, MSN Messenger and Pocket MSN. The e405, but not e400, comes with ArcSoft’s PhotoBase software, which allows you to view images, create photo albums and make minor edits to photos.

Battery and package:

The Toshiba e405 personal digital assistant uses a 960mAh lithium ion battery which is not user replaceable. It is really very disappointing to know that the battery is not swappable. But on the other side, the performance of the battery is very good for a PDA of this capacity. It gives a decent talk time of around four hours . The talk time will differ based on whether memory card is used or not and the brightness of the display.

The box contents include The e405 is more commonly found in retail markets and includes ArcSoft PhotoBase image viewing software. A USB cable, charger, and software CD and manuals.

Verdict:

Its SDIO slots now supporting SDIO as well as, Bsquare’s SDIO. It was the first PDA to have voice command and text to speech applications, with a good processor, ample RAM and SD slot. e405 PDA was one of the high end models with more horse power and a VGA display. Hence, it is certainly recommended by pdareviews.

Toshiba e405 Pocket PC - Technical Specifications, Features

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