.: Big review of TDS Recon 400

Author - Pavel Koza :: User rating -   (70 votes) :: Views - 21859 July 08, 2004 :: I have reviewed many different PDAs since I started this server. I have reviewed highly powerful devices as well as extremely poor performers. I have reviewed big devices and small devices. One could think I must have held all the existing types of devices. Wrong! Today, I'd like to introduce something that I have never encountered before. TDS Recon 400 is a PDA with a difference. When I am saying difference, I mean a DIFFERENCE.

I don't need to keep persuading you that it is different. Even a beginner to the PDA world will notice at least ten differences between this and "usual" Pocket PCs at first sight. I hope you will not mind that this review will also be a little different. So, instead of the usual introduction, here are a few real-life situations that some of you may have experienced.

Situation one. We all know those mornings - rushing to an important meeting from your office to the conference room in the other part of the building, your briefcase in one hand, and your pocket assistant in the other. You are not looking around, checking some notes on the display when BANG! You run into that heavyweight guy from the office next door and there you all roll on the floor. Fortunately, your skeleton survived unharmed, unlike your PDA. The rare chance to see the latest Intel processor can hardly compensate the fact that your valuable gadget has turned into a heap of scrap.

Situation two. An increasing number of users have started using their "standard PDA" as a powerful navigation aid. Paper maps are obsolete in the 21st century, electronic maps are in. However, there are many dangers lurking outdoors and the tougher the conditions, the greater problems we may encounter. Just a second when you forget to watch your step, one slippery stone and you follow your PDA to the only one but surprisingly deep puddle on the trail. In such a situation, a luxury leather case form Covertec won't help much, I am afraid.

Situation three. After a year of hard work, you take your deserved two weeks of holidays. Blue ocean, hot sun, palms, beaches, deck chairs, excellent cocktails. No wonder that you fall asleep after a while. Your hand with a "standard PDA" drops and your brand new pocket computer rests on hot sand. When you wake up after two hours, the PDA is completely covered with sand (you are lucky, no thieves in the vicinity:) You spend the rest of your holidays wondering if the warranty applies to that type of damage.

You could think of a dozen other situations but those three can well illustrate the problem. They all produce the same result - a broken PDA and frustrated user, but only if you use an ordinary pocket device, such as iPAQ, Axim or LOOX, without any special protection. However, if you replace the "standard PDA" with TDS Recon 400 manufactured by Tripod Data Systems, all those stories can have a happy ending. Why? Well, read on to find out.

Just to make the information complete, besides TDS Recon 400 that I am reviewing, there is a less powerful model Recon 200 which has a 200-MHz processor and half the FlashROM memory, i.e. 64 MB.

What's that Recon, anyway?

If the foregoing has prompted you to consider TDS Recon 400 as you future pocket companion to replace an iPAQ or Axim, come back to the ground. Firstly, the high durability attested by a number various certificates is not a free bonus. For one Recon, you could buy PDAs for a five-member family and then go for an opulent dinner. Secondly, in comparison with "standard PDAs", the Recon is a true heavyweight. I have not found a single piece of clothing in my wardrobe with a pocket large enough to contain the Recon. That is why you will hardly ever be able to see a manager rushing down the hallway carrying a yellow Recon.

Recon is primarily intended for deployment in places where a normal PDA would be a costly but useless accessory. You may imagine a soldier with camouflaged face in the midst of a jungle deep in enemy territory, drenched with tropical rain, as he is enjoying his usual lunchtime game of Solitaire before a major offensive:) Yes, the Recon is designed for such situations but there are many more everyday situations where it will come handy. Not everyone works in an air-conditioned office, and dust, high humidity and rain are usually deadly for common electronics. Construction engineers, progressive farmers, architects, explorers etc., all those will surely appreciate the special features of the rugged device (and be willing to pay for them).

What is in the box?

A relatively large box contains only things you will need and use in real life.

• TDS Recon 400
• Battery with system connectors
• Standard USB cable
• Two styluses
• AC adapter with three different replaceable plugs
• Package of 10 protective foils for the display
• Rubber strap with metal fasteners makes it possible to secure it to your hand
• Brief user manual
• Bonus CD

The device itself is so interesting that it is worth leaving it for a thorough examination later. The battery is not stand-alone but shares a waterproof cover with three connectors. There is no synchronisation cradle but only a USB cable. Given the purpose of this device, it is unlikely that it will ever spend much time by the PC on the office desk, anyway. Recon does not use any proprietary connectors but standard USB and 9-pin serial connectors, so that you can easily obtain new cables, if you need - an example other manufacturers should follow.

There are two styluses, quite robust and unusually large ones. On one end, they have a sort of plastic screwdriver you need for fastening the battery in place and removing caps that protect two CompactFlash slots (one is Type I, the other Type II).

The AC adapter is truly versatile. There are three replaceable plugs so that it should be no problem to charge the device anywhere in the world. An essential protective aid for such a device is a display foil. The manufacturer supplies a pack of ten. The foil is good quality and does not hamper display responsiveness in any way.

It is expected that you will be climbing mountains, rafting and doing all kinds of other dangerous activities with the PDA. For those purposes, the manufacturer supplies a rubber strap that attaches to the back of the device and makes it possible to secure it to your hand. The strap and fasteners are made of rugged material, so that you don't need to worry that it could break.

Finally, there is an applications CD-ROM and a brief user manual. Unlike in standard Pocket PCs, I recommend reading the manual very carefully, because there are a few unusual things about the Recon. Without the manual, it could well take you half an hour to find out how to perform such a simple activity as to reset the device, for instance:) There are also a few leaflets with warranty information etc., as usual.

Design

It would require a heavy visual impairment for someone not to notice any difference between the Recon and standard PDAs. You can see the visible differences in the photos, there is no need to elaborate. The exact dimensions are 3.75 x 6.50 x 1.75 inches / 9.5 x 16.5 x 4.5 centimetres, the weight is almost half a kilo (17 ounces / 490 grams) - obviously, you will not want to carry it in your shirt pocket:) The device comprises three detachable parts. The main part is a massive body of the device with a display. It is the grey part in the photos. In my opinion, it is made of a hard plastic. The back is made of tough rubber, which provides one of the ways of protection for the device. It is divided into two parts. The larger (lower) one is the battery and is attached to the main body by two screws. The smaller (upper) one is in fact a cover of two CompactFlash slots, and is also held by two screws. If you want to use an I/O CF card that is larger than a memory card, you will need to replace the "cap" with a larger one offering more space.

Description of the outer shell of the device is not very exciting - the whole thing is made to last and to provide maximum protection to vulnerable parts of the device. It is worth mentioning only a few specific parts. Let's start with the front panel, where there is a display sunk below the surface, a rubber-coated four-directional control and six buttons. Four of them are user-definable (preset to Calendar, Contacts, Mail and Start Menu by default), the other two are permanently assigned their functions (confirm action and power on/off). The cursor control is very precise, mainly because there is a separate switch for each direction. I would not expect any audio features in a water-resistant device yet they are present - as you can see in the photos, there are two dotted areas resembling loudspeakers on the front panel.

Another interesting area is the bottom of the device, where there is a massive power connector and two communication ports. One of them is a standard 9-pin serial connector, the other is a standard USB type B connector for connecting to a desktop PC or other devices, such as a GPS module. In the middle of the back, there is a narrow shaft in which the stylus fits tightly. On both ends, there are metal holders to attach the rubber strap.

That's all, there is nothing more. Unlike in standard PDAs, there is no software reset button or infrared port, but it's not a drawback, it's a feature. Everything is designed for durability and easy maintenance.

Parameters

Although performance is probably not the main criterion for someone considering this device, it is still an important factor. Parameters of this device are quite good. Beside, the Recon introduces some interesting innovations. The processor is a common Intel PXA255 chip called XScale, running at 400 MHz. Although it appeared a little slower than the same processor in iPAQ h4150 in benchmark tests, I did not notice any difference in real life. Unfortunately, there is no way to adjust processor speed with a software utility. It would make sense to implement this feature in such a device because energy may be quite precious when staying long far from the mains. The operating memory is a standard 64 MB (58 MB out which is available to the user). On the other hand, Recon boasts of 128 MB of re-writable FlashROM. The user can use "only" 112 MB but still, it is much more than the usual few tens of megabytes offered by other devices. No wonder, because saving data to the safe memory provides increased protection against their loss, something you would expect in this type of device. Besides saving individual files there, the safe storage is intended for complete backups of the system and you will probably want to use the Backup and Restore utilities quite often.

The display is not one of the most excellent ones I have seen but it excels others in readability - it is perfectly readable in all possible light conditions, without exaggeration. If there is anything important about this type of device, it is this feature. I tested the device for several days and I cannot say anything negative about the display. Technically speaking, it is a TFT display of a standard size (3.5inches / 89-millimetre diagonal) and resolution (240x320 pixels), as well as number of colours (65 thousand). Display backlight can be adjusted separately for battery and mains operation at 32 levels. When you switch the device on or press a button, the backlight comes up gradually to the full strength, which is quite impressive. Although the colours are not as bright and rich as in some other devices, the quality is more than adequate for viewing maps and other images. If you like, you can activate the ClearType technology and fine-tune it using a Settings applet. The touch-sensitive layer is highly responsive even with the protective foil.

I'll be brief on the audio features. Recon has a built-in loudspeaker which does not produce very good sound, given its hidden under the waterproof case of the device. That does not mean that Recon can only beep. It can replay all audio formats like any other Pocket PC but the sound is rather muted. There are no other audio-related features, such as microphone or headphones jack.

Recon's communication capabilities are not very extensive, either. I have mentioned the standard serial and USB ports, you need to buy an extra expansion card for everything else. The device lacking even a common infrared port, cables remain the only way of communicating with other devices in the basic configuration.

The device comes with an unusually large battery with a capacity of 3800 mAh. It is neither Lithium-Ion nor Lithium-Polymer, but Nickel-Metal-Hydride, which powered the device for an excellent 12 hours in the usual test (maximum backlight and standard usage), although Spb Benchmark was rather confused by the device... There is no backup battery but the system retains its status for 30 seconds, time you have to replace the battery. In any case, it will do no harm to make a backup as often as possible. TDS also offers a special module for standard AA cells for those who cannot access the mains for a long time.

Expandability

Besides the standard serial port, the Recon offers more expansion possibilities using the two CompactFlash slots. One of them will accommodate CF type II cards, the other type I cards. The Recon worked well with various memory cards including an IBM Microdrive as well as with I/O cards, such as LAN, WiFi etc. However, if you insert other than memory card in the CF slot, you will have problems putting the cap in place because I/O cards usually stick out of the slot a little. TDS offers solution in an optional larger cap that will contain bigger cards.

On top of that, TDS offers other optional accessories, such as extra batteries and adapters, an elegant case etc.

Software

The device ships with pre-installed OS Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC Professional Edition. This means that some applications, such as Terminal Client and Microsoft Reader, are not pre-installed as a part of the operating system. And there is only one bonus application.

The only bonus is Pocket Backup from Sprite Software. It will help you back up the memory contents so that everything is easy to restore in case of an accident. The application is well done and makes it possible to backup/restore data with one tap. After a hard reset, the system automatically offers to restore an existing backup data, which makes everything yet easier.

The CD-ROM contains nothing but basic MS applications; you need to obtain other software yourself.

Pricing

Obviously, all those special features are costly. As I wrote at the beginning, a medium-sized family could all buy PDAs for the price of a Recon and I did not exaggerate. The price of some USD 1500 for the more powerful model is a multiple of that of standard PDAs. Nevertheless, those for whom the device is intended will be happy to pay for safety of their data. As a data terminal, the Recon is designed (not only) for situations where repeated data collection due to their loss would be too costly and the few extra bucks for a rugged, safe PDA will pay. Likewise, it would be naive to think that the Recon is a common PDA in an overly expensive rubber coat and that a LOOX in Aquapack, for instance, will provide the same services - no, it will not. The construction is designed to last and endure harsh conditions, which is neither simple nor cheap. There are many components inside that you won't find in an ordinary PDA. That's why the Recon meets strict military and industrial requirements. If you want to purchase it, check my affiliate hardware store or contact Handheld AB if you are in Europe, or TDSfor the rest of the world to find a distributor near you.

Benchmarks and tests

This chapter is going to be a little different than usual because I don't think potential buyers are interested in video playback performance or how fast Snails crawl across the display in a game of the same name. The main focus will be on durability tests. One of the reasons for such a high price is costly certification of compliance with strict military standards. I am not going to list them all, please refer to the TDS website for details. Initially, I had moral problems treating the Recon in a different way than standard Pocket PCs but after a few days, I gathered courage and started performing durability tests. I can confirm that everything that TDS claim on their website is true. The Recon being the first high-durability device I tested, I won't perform benchmark tests as with the "normal" Pocket PCs, because there is no comparison between them.

The basic durability test according to military standards is dropping the device repeatedly from the height of 1.22 meters on a wooden board laid on concrete surface. I opted for the carpeted floor in my living room (although I had been repeatedly assured that I would not be held liable for any damage the device would suffer in my tests, I tried to avoid the honour). The Recon survived unharmed. What's more, when I introduced the Recon to my beloved wife, saying "this is a device that will survive a fall on the ground," she merely replied, "let's test it", grasped it and flung it down. The Recon bounced several times and ended lying display down. With my heart throbbing, I bowed and picked the device to assess damage. Unlike myself, the Recon was absolutely OK. The display was shining happily and my pulse slowly returned to the normal. I then dropped the device a few more times when demonstrating its capabilities to my relatives, always with the same result - no problem for the Recon. You can watch the test if you download this short MPEG file :: Testing free fall [1067KB].

Unfortunately, the Recon has a weak spot, an Achilles' heel. If you guess it's the display, you are right. Not even the best protective foil can prevent serious damage when the device falls and the display hits a rock or other hard object. The display is protected passively by being sunk deep below the surface. If you are one of those "lucky" people, like me, first real-life accident will necessarily end in a broken display. A solution could be similar to that introduced a long time ago by Jornada 420, as far as I can remember - a hinged transparent plastic sheet that protected the display. In the event of accident, it could be easily replaced for a few dollars. Although any falls are presumed to be ACCIDENTAL, not intentional in an effort to damage the device, I would expect better protection of such a sensitive part in a device costing $1500 USD.

The second test was dirt. This did not pose any problem for the Recon, either. Having been buried in garden compost, it required nothing more than a shower and a towel for the Recon to recover completely. If it were sticky mud, cleaning would be more difficult (especially in the connectors area) but the result would be the same. And if the connectors get obstructed irrecoverably, (e.g. by hardened cement... don't laugh, such things happen in the construction industry, which is one of the areas that the Recon is designed for:), all it takes is to replace this part and the show can go on.

The last test was water. In the first stage, I showered the Recon but it did not pay attention, so I filled the basin with water and started playing underwater Bubbles, what else:) The TDS website claims that the Recon is tested to survive submerging 1 meter under water for 30 minutes. I don't have such a deep basin yet I took my time to finish the game of Bubbles. I hope you take the Recon's water-resistance for granted now:)

The Recon works in temperatures ranging from -30 to 60 degrees Celsius, is resistant to vibrations and is certified to work in altitudes up to 4500 metres above sea level, so that it can be used by mountain climbers. And that's all. I hope you liked the review and if you ever find yourself in a situation when you need a really durable device, refer to it.

Conclusion It is difficult to evaluate the first device in its category I have tested for there is nothing to compare with (90% rating in this case is NOT COMPARABLE with 90 % achieved by an iPAQ). If I stick to the facts, the evaluation cannot be bad. From the technical point of view, the device does exactly what it is expected to do. The raw computing power may be a little worse than in other devices with a 400-MHz processor, but it is insignificant given the purpose of the device. Its main task is to protect your data wherever you are, a task the Recon can carry out perfectly. Everything considered, Recon proved that the information on the TDS website is not cheap propaganda but real values. I should stress again that the device is NOT UNBREAKABLE. If you performed "crash tests" with the aim to destroy the device, you would surely succeed. However, the device is designed to survive harsh conditions and protect data against ACCIDENTS, a purpose that it serves perfectly. :: The final rating is 90%

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