Treo 650 vs iPAQ hw6500

Part I – the basics
From a photo, it’s very easy to measure the size of things. All we need is one element with a known size. For example, on this Treo 600 let’s assume that we only know that the screen size is 2.5″.

By measuring the length in pixels, we can very quickly do a ratio and find the width and the height. (The real dimensions of the Treo 600 are W2.30″ x H4.40″). It’s not 100% exact, but it’s fairly accurate.

Part II – The hw6500 initial photosAll the estimations are made from the few images that we got from Ipaqabilities. The first issue is that the images are not photographs. They appear to be 3D renderings. This means that unless these images have been done with the blueprint of the smart phone, things can be inaccurate, although I expect it to reflect the overall device appearance, as they are probably marketing materials.

The image where a user holds the device in his hand (click to zoom) has suspicious areas that would indicate that the device and the SD card have been digitally added.

Part III – measurementsWe are going to apply the method used in Part I on the Treo 600. The SD card is the only piece with a known size: the width of the card should be 24mm.

Our method on both images yields 2 very different results(photo1, photo2), so something is wrong. A closer look to small details is showing us that there is quite a mismatch between the two images when it comes to the SD card. Look at the red lines, they show where the SD card should be. In the photo, it’s completely off, reinforcing our initial thought that the card and the device were added digitally.

Are we out of luck? If the rendered image is not using the blueprint and if the SD card is not at the right size there’s no much left. It’s true, but there are more clues.

Part IV – The keyboard gives it allThe keyboard of the iPAQ hw6500 reminded me of something. It didn’t take long to realize that I was thinking about the iPAQ 4355 Pocket PC with the integrated keyboard (photo). If you look closely, the layout is exactly the same.

It doesn’t mean much, right? After all, the whole device could be smaller. May be, but look at the spacing between each button on the keyboard. It’s hard to believe that a small device (smaller than the 4355) could have such a large spacing between the keyboard buttons. I therefore believe that the 4355 and the hw6500 are sharing the same keyboard and therefore the same width (click to zoom). The width of the 4355 is 2.9″.

Now that we have the width, it’s pretty straightforward to guess the rest. I think that the Height is 4.95″. As for the deep, I didn’t take the time of doing it, but on the 4355 it’s 0.6″. The hw6500 might be a bit thicker because of the SD slots, so I’d throw a 0.6″ to 0.8″.

From there, it’s very easy to create an image where the two devices are side by side.