IPAQ H 3800

Year 2000

The iPAQ is a Pocket PC and personal digital assistant, first unveiled by Compaq in April 2000; the name was borrowed from Compaq's earlier iPAQ Desktop Personal Computers. Since Hewlett-Packard's acquisition of Compaq, the product has been marketed by HP. The devices use a Windows Mobile interface. In addition to this, there are several Linux distributions that will also operate on some of these devices. Earlier units were modular. "Sleeve" accessories, technically called jackets, which slide around the unit and add functionality such as a card reader, wireless networking, GPS, and even extra batteries were used. Later versions of iPAQs have most of these features integrated into the base device itself, some including GPRS mobile-telephony (sim-card slot and radio).

A feature in Linux Magazine in 2001, described the iPAQ 3630 as a "highly promising platform" and depicted it running Pocket Linux,^[1] shown in summer 2000.^[2] The first iPAQ to be released was the H3100. It had a four-bit grayscale display, running on Pocket PC 2000. The H3100 was succeeded by the similarly-designed H3600. Changes included a colour display and a chrome coloured directional pad compared to the monochrome display and gunmetal grey d-pad of its predecessor. The H3600 was succeeded by the H3800 and H3900, which retained the same form factor, but had a different button layout.