Larry Garfield makes a call to Audiovox's new and petite communicator, the PPC 4100, in an attempt to find out whether it's a good handheld, good phone - or both.
Design
The Audiovox PPC 4100 can best be described as "squat". Notably shorter than most handhelds or communicators at 109 x 68 x 22 mm, the 4100 also makes it somewhat thick due to the large battery in back. At 159 grams, it is also somewhat hefty yet still at the light-side as communicators go. The simple casing is a silver-colored plastic with black strips down the sides, making for a very traditional feel.
 | Audiovox' PPC-4100 pulls off what it sets out to do, but doesn't impress in the process
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The PPC 4100 is very simplistic in its design. The screen consists of a typical QVGA 240 x 320 16-bit color TFT, standard for most Windows Mobile devices. Colors, however, look faded and washed out, something we find very surprising for a modern handheld. Also surprising is the near complete lack of buttons. The PPC 4100 has a power button above the screen and Call and Hangup buttons below, and that's it for the front - there is no directional pad, nor any application buttons. The left side of the device includes a jog wheel, volume rocker, and physical hold switch to disable the screen and buttons while playing music, all of which work well.
The top of the device includes an SDIO-capable Secure Digital slot, covered headphone jack and IR port, as well as the 2 cm long external antenna. The antenna is rather wide, although not ungainly, with the cheap plastic stylus of the unit sliding into the side of the antenna. The base of the device includes yet another serial port design, and returning briefly to the front we find two LEDs in front of the antenna, one of which blinks incessantly whenever the GSM radio is on. In all, the PPC 4100 feels about on-par for a heavy handheld, but is not narrow enough for comfortable phone use.
Connectivity
The tri-band GSM 850/1800/1900 MHz PPC 4100 supports world-roaming GSM and data over GPRS class 10, but lacks Bluetooth support. That leaves users with either against-the-face usage, which works but quickly becomes uncomfortable; speakerphone, which has privacy issues; or using either of the included mono or stereo wired headsets. There is also no Wi-Fi support.
As previosuly mentioned, the PPC 4100 als offers PAN connectivity courtesy of an Infrared port and an SDIO capable SD/MMC Card expansion slot - both of which are standard on any modern device.
Specifications
On the inside, the PPC 4100 looks better. It offers a 400 MHz Intel XScale processor with auto-throttling, capable of running at 400 MHz, 200 MHz, or auto-throttling the speed as needed. In practice, we had no issues with responsiveness. It then adds 64 MB of ROM for the OS and 64 MB of user-accessible RAM, placing it about mid-range for Windows Mobile-based communicators.
The battery is a rather large 1480 mAh Lithium Ion pack, responsible for most of the weight of the PPC 4100. In testing, it was able to play music for just about 7 hours before shutting down in self-defense with the GSM radio on but not in use, a perfectly respectable score although a bit low for such a large battery. Audio quality and volume were both good.
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