Winmate E430T
Rugged industrial
Android PDA with 4.3-inch capacitive multi-touch WVGA
sunlight-viewable display combines state-of-the-art
smartphone technology with enough toughness for any
job
(by Conrad H.
Blickenstorfer with photography by Carol Cotton)
Over the
years, the size of Pocket PC/PDA displays has been going
up and down. First it was 3.8 inches, then they got
smaller and smaller, and now the trend is reversing,
most likely due to smartphones going to ever larger
screens. Perhaps this is why Winmate's new E430T
industrial PDA has a nice, large display, too. Or
perhaps it's because Winmate likes to cover all the
bases, and there was a gap between their 3.7-inch and
5.7-inch handhelds.
Perhaps more importantly, with the E430T, Winmate
offers a handheld computing device that's eminently
timely in an era where hundreds of million of people now
have smartphones, but can't really use them on many jobs
because consumer phones just aren't built for that. This
Winmate, on the other hand, can handle infinitely more
abuse than one of those sleek consumer phones, and it
does so without reverting to the clunky old legacy
technology that so often mars the appeal and usefulness
of industrial devices. This "industrial PDA," as Winmate
calls it, runs Android and has capacitive multi-touch.
A rugged smartphone, but one you can get with
scanner and RFID
There's also no denying that,
apart from being technologically up-to-date, the E430T
is an attractive unit for sure. Like many Asian
manufacturers, Winmate isn't always sure what to call
their products in English. The E430 is referred to as an
industrial PDA, a handheld device, an enterprise-class
PDA, and a rugged handheld. We'd primarily consider it a
rugged smartphone, but then how many smartphones have a
full laser scanner and RFID built in? What Winmate did
here, really, was merge the best of today's smartphones
with the best of rugged handheld computing technology,
and stuff it all into a remarkably attractive package. 
In terms of size, measuring 3.2 x 5.2 inches, being
less than an inch thick, and weighing just over eight
ounces, the E430T is thicker and heavier than, say, a
Motorola Droid X smartphone, but hardly larger. And the
picture to the right shows how the rugged Winmate
compares to the (by now admittedly downright petite)
Apple iPhone 4s.
As far as tech specs go, Winmate's latest is based on
the Texas Instruments DM3730 processor running at 1GHz.
This is an OMAP-compatible package with an ARM Cortex-A8
core and a powerful graphics accelerator. The 4.3-inch
capacitive multi-touch display offers 480 x 800 pixel
WVGA resolution. Other new-era tech includes dual
cameras, a micro-SD card slot, speedy 802.11n WiFi,
integrated GPS, and optional 3.5G mobile broadband.
What's interesting is that Winmate offers the E430
platform both with Android and with Windows Embedded
Handheld 6.5 or Windows CE 6.0. That's not surprising
given the ongoing operating system uncertainty in rugged
and industrial handhelds where, for the most part, the
legacy Microsoft Windows CE/Windows Mobile still rule,
in sharp contrast to consumer smartphones where it's
almost all Android and Apple's iOS. This has led to some
manufacturers of industrial handhelds offering both OS
platforms, but they are usually running on different
processors and slightly different hardware whereas the
E430 can run either on the same hardware. Interesting.
Android, though, is the default OS.
But as stated, what truly sets the E430 apart is that
it combines a modern look and feel with state-of-the-art
smartphone technology to make a tough and rugged device
with an industrial grade scanner (as opposed to just a
scanning app to work with the camera as consumer phones
do) and RFID. That's what's needed on many jobs, and
it's just not available from flimsy consumer
smartphones, even if they have scanner add-ons and such.
Design and construction
While from
upfront the Winmate E430 looks like just another modern
smartphone, take it in your hands or look at it from the
side or back, and it's instantly obvious that this
device is built to last and take a good bit of abuse.
The body is made of ABS plastic with rubberized bumper
areas and overmolding offering not only an attractive
look, but also extra protection along the sides and
corners. Physical controls are at a minimum. Like all
devices with procap digitizers, the E430 is operated
almost exclusively via touch. While our review device
came in an attractive yellow and black, Winmate also
offers the E430 in white with light-blue moldings,
likely geared towards applications in healthcare
settings.
On the left side is the volume up/down rocker, on the
right side a function button and the on/off switch. The
function key on the right side is used as a scanner
trigger. Righthanders who usually hold phones and mobile
computers in their left hand would probably prefer the
scanner button on the left side so it can be operated
with the thumb. And we'd have preferred to see the
scanner and on/off button not so close together. As is,
it's easy to confuse the two.
For wired connectivity, there's just one micro-USB
port that's used for everything: charging, communication
and all. Also note that the unit's micro-SD and SIM card
slots are inside the unit and not externally accessible.
A look inside
The Winmate E430T rugged handheld
is relatively easy to open and service, which is a good
thing given the internally located expansion slots. All
you have to do is unscrew four small Philips head screws
in the back and two on the side, and the backside comes
off, yielding a view of  the
large flat rectangular replaceable Lithium-Polymer
battery, the scanner, and the rear camera with its LED
illuminator light next to it. Note that you can order
the E430T with either a 1D laser scanner module or a
1D/2D CMOS imager unit.
The interior of the E430 is incredibly neat. You
don't see any circuit boards or wires, it's all
underneath and integrated into an inner black plastic
subframe. In a way, it's like looking under the hood of
some modern cars where you no longer see the nuts and
bolts and plugs and belts of a motor, but only nicely
sculpted cowls to neatly cover and hide all the
mechanicals underneath. We refrained from taking the
cowl assembly apart.
 One
minor concern here is the thin rubber sealer o-ring that
snakes around the entire perimeter of the housing, with
numerous curves and angles and indents and detours. The
o-ring is loose and it's all too easy for it to not sit
properly when you put the backside of the housing back
on. This would be a cause for concern even if users
never had a reason to take the device apart, but with
the E430 they have to in order to replace the battery,
insert a SIM card, and even insert and remove a micro-SD
card. So meticulous attention must be paid to that
o-ring on re-assembly, or else there will be leaks.
The micro-SD card slot isn't as much a slot as it is
a tray where you must slide the cover to one side so
that it pivots open, revealing the card underneath. The
whole mechanism is quite delicate and since it is not
immediately obvious how it works, there's a bit of a
danger for inadvertent damage. The picture below shows
the inside of the Winmate E430T handheld with the
battery removed:
Not an awful lot of information is available on the
device's components. There's a u-blox GPS module, but
we're not sure which one. WiFi is single-band
801.11b/g/n, and Bluetooth v2.1 + EDR.
There
also isn't much information on the two cameras, other
than the resolution. The Android version of the E430T
has a 2-megapixel front camera and a 5-megapixel rear
documentation camera with illumination LED. Both can do
stills and video and they work reasonably well, though
this is an area that's not quite up to modern consumer
smartphone levels.
The battery (shown in the picture to the right) is a
rechargeable Li-Ion 3.7Volt/2,400 mAH Li-Poly 9.6
watt-hours. Winmate claims it's good for up to 8.6
hours.
Overall, everything looked neat and clean inside.
This is a well executed design and nice production job.
Choice of processor
For almost a decade,
Intel/Marvell XScale PXA processors ruled the mobile CPU
roost and were found in virtually every PDA and
industrial handheld. Those days are gone now, and
Winmate,  like
most others, chose to go with a competing design, in
this instance a 1GHz Texas Instruments Cortex A8 DM3730.
This chip (where the "DM" stands for Digital Media) is
also found in other contemporary rugged handhelds such
as the Trimble Juno T41 and Motorola's revolutionary HC1
headset computer.
The TI DM3730 processor is actually a multi core
system that contains both an ARM Cortex-A8 core and a
MEON SIMD co-processor as well as a PowerVR SGX graphics
accelerator chip. The chip uses 45nm process technology,
was designed by TI to deliver excellent ARM as well as
graphics performance at very low power consumption, and
it's fully compatible with the OMAP 3 architecture.
Operating System
As stated above, the Winmate E430T
comes standard with Android 2.3.4, but can also be
ordered with Windows Embedded Handheld 6.5 (essentially
Windows Mobile) or Windows CE 6.0. This warrants some
discussion.
A stated earlier, while the vast majority of all
smartphones run either Android or iOS, most industrial
handhelds still run Windows CE or Windows Mobile. That's
a bit of a head-scratcher as Windows CE is not a pretty
operating system and never has been. Compared to iOS and
Android, and even Microsoft's own Windows Phone 7/7.5
and Phone 8, Windows CE looks crude and positively
ancient.  One
can only wonder what caused Microsoft to keep things
this basic for so many years. Yet, after all is said and
done, it could be argued that for many applications,
there's still nothing else that provides full and
totally reliable interoperability with existing
Microsoft enterprise infrastructure while enabling the
use of the ubiquitous Microsoft development tools scores
of programmers are familiar with.
Another argument of the Windows CE crowd is that
capacitive touch screens don't work with gloves on or
when it's wet. That's true, for the most part, but one
could argue that needing a tiny stylus to click tiny
boxes in Windows CE also wasn't that easy with gloves
on. Be that as it may, we're now seeing more and more
procap touch screens in industrial devices. Given that
hundreds of millions of consumers use their procap
smartphones outdoors every day, procap's limitations
seem manageable.
The overarching fact is that ever since the
introduction of Apple's iOS and then Android, user
expectations for smartphones, tablets, and handheld
computers have fundamentally changed. Before the iPhone,
mobile operating systems generally looked and felt like
drastically downsized versions of desktop operating
systems. The iPhone showed that handheld operating
systems can be sleek, fast, elegant and simple to use on
displays using projected capacitive technology that
allows the softest touch as well as multi-finger
operation for zooming, panning, etc.
Hence, for now Android is the default OS for
Winmate's most serious entry into modern industrial
handhelds. While Android certainly has its own
challenges (like version fragmentation,
incompatibilities due to the very large variety of
hardware Android runs on, and lack of truly centralized
platform control as is the case with iOS), the sheer
number of Android users and Android developers means
easy access to programming tools and expertise and a
vast number of inexpensive downloadable apps in numerous
categories and for numerous applications.
We used the Debug Monitor of the Android SDK to grab
a number of screen captures that show some of the apps
we used (and installed) on the E430T. First the standard
default screen (below left), the standard Home screen
(center) that you can customize with whatever background
you want and populate with whatever app icons or widgets
you want. And (right) the apps screen.
As a voice and data device, the Winmate E430T can be
used as both a handheld computer and communicator as
well as a phone. Below left you can see the special "car
mode" menu that allows access to navigation, music,
recordings, contacts and the phone. The phone app itself
(center) provides all the standard phone functionality
we've come to expect, or you can install Skype (we
didn't try it).
With its u-Blox GPS module, the E430T is a capable
GPS/GIS device. We tried Google Maps to check local
traffic conditions (below left). There's also the Google
Messaging app (center), and we downloaded the handy AK
Notepad from the Google store to take quick notes.
The stock Android browser works well. The 800 x 480
pixel resolution is enough to read even very small text,
and multi-touch with its two-finger pinching and zooming
makes browsing so much easier on a small screen.
The Winmate E430T can easily connect to the Google
store that includes a vast wealth of apps, mags, books,
video and music. Corporate deployments may or may not
allow access to the Google Play store.
Winmate included a handy Data Capture dashboard from
which users can quickly activate or shut down integrated
data capture modules. This is the kind of value-added
utility software that's the difference between a device
and a tool for the job.
There are, of course, thousands of utilities of all
sorts and kinds available for Android. Below are some we
installed: a WiFi analyzer, a broadband speed tester,
and an electronic compass.
You can also use the E430T as a voice recorder,
camera or video recorder (both front and back) and, of
course, to use all the many Google apps available for
Android.
What all that means is that users of the
Android-powered E430T have instant access to far more
apps and utilities than were available for mobile
computers of the past. And virtually all apps are
attractive, well designed and very functional. That
simply wasn't the case in the Windows CE era.
Display and usability
While notebook, tablet and
smartphone displays have improved dramatically over the
past several years, industrial handheld displays were
slow in following suit. Many industrial handhelds still
use tiny screens with decade-old QVGA resolution.
Fortunately, the Winmate E430T isn't one of them. Its
4.3-inch 480 x 800 pixel screen is bright and crisp. It
also has a perfect viewing angle from all sides, and
there are none of the dreaded color shifts that
bedeviled older LCDs. The display is also bright enough
to be easily viewable outdoors. Winmate's specs list a
brightness of 400 nits, which is about twice that of a
standard consumer notebook. About the only thing bad
that could be said about the display is that, like
virtually all procap devices, it's very reflective. On
the plus side, the display surface is much less prone to
fingerprints and oily smudges than most.
As far as the projected capacitive touch screen goes,
it works very well. Touch, tapping, panning, pinching
and zooming all happen easily and effortlessly, and
anyone who has an Android phone will instantly know how
to use the E430T, configure and customize it, and
navigate through its menus. The display, of course, is
flush-mounted so that fingers don't bump into a bezel
when operating the device.
We did run into two issues. One was the power button
that was not only too close to the function button, but
also was difficult to figure out. iPhones, for example,
have a power and a menu button, with the power button
turning the device on and off, and the menu button
waking it up. The E430T's power button often could not
be convinced to wake the device up, instead requiring a
long press to have it start from cold. This was either
something we did wrong, or it was a glitch.
Another annoyance was the close proximity of the
onscreen keyboard in its default portrait orientation to
the four touch-sensitive Android controls just below the
keyboard. It was often impossible to type something
without inadvertently
triggering one of the Android
buttons.
Ruggedness
Ruggedness is often difficult to
define. Gear that looks tough and rugged often isn't,
and gear that looks quite ordinary can take a beating.
There is no such ambiguity with the Winmate E430T. While
it doesn't look like a tank, it's built like one, and
the minute you pick it up for the first time you know
that it's almost infinitely tougher than any consumer
smartphone. It's hard to imagine the E430T ever breaking
or even getting scratched.
 As
far as environmental specs go, the device is sealed to
IP65 or IP66 specifications (depending on which part of
the documentation and specs you read). The first "6"
(the highest rating) means total protection against
dust. The second "6" would mean it is also protected
against strong jets of water while a "5" would mean low
pressure water jets from all directions, with limited
ingress permitted. To make the sealing issue even more
confusing, Winmate's own website has a video where they
place the E430T into an aquarium. Protection against
full immersion would mean an IP67.
Winmate lists a very wide operating temperature of -4
to 140 degrees Fahrenheit (-20 to 60 Celsius). That
means the unit can be used in virtually any operating
environment, including commercial freezers.
The device also carries a 4-foot drop spec, and that
is also demonstrated in a video on the Winmate website.
To be honest, the device feels like it would handle a
larger drop.
Unfortunately, the specs don't list detailed
ruggedness data and only suggest that the unit is
vibration, drop and tumbling resistant. More detailed
data is likely available from Winmate, and it should
really be part of the official published specs of a
rugged device.
Bottom line: Winmate E430T rugged handheld PDA
The
Android-based Winmate E430T rugged handheld PDA may well
be the answer for a lot of individuals and businesses
who want a device with modern smartphone technology and
ease-of-use, but also one that won't easily break on the
job. With a footprint of 3.2 x 5.2 inches the E430T is
about the size of a contemporary large-sceen phone. At
about 9 ounces, it's considerably heavier than one of
those ever more slender phones and it's thicker, too,
but it's still light and handy enough to fit into most
pockets.
The 4.3-inch display is gratifyingly large and its
800 x 480 pixel resolution is high enough to make it
crisp and sharp. The projected capacitive multi touch
screen works as it does on any modern smartphone, which
means tapping, panning, punching and zooming through
apps that were all designed for this sort of touch
interface. It's too easy, though, to inadvertently
trigger the standard Android buttons below the screen
when typing.
Like modern smartphones, the E430T can be used as a
phone and as a computer, but unlike consumer smartphones
it can be equipped with an industrial-grade laser
scanner, 1D/2D CMOS imager or RFID. And the device is
much tougher and more durable than any consumer
smartphone. This is one of the most exciting rugged
devices we've reviewed in quite some time, and there
should be plenty of interest from anyone who's ready to
start using Android on the job, no matter how tough a
job it is. -- Conrad H.
Blickenstorfer, January 2013
| Winmate E430T
Specifications |
| Added/changed |
Added 11/2011, full review
1/2013 |
| Type |
Rugged industrial PDA |
| Processor |
1GHz Texas Instruments DM3730
with DSP |
| OS |
Android
2.3.4 |
| GPS |
u-Blox |
| RAM/ROM |
512MB/512MB NAND
FLASH |
| Display |
4.3" color TFT with WVGA (480
x 800 pixel) resolution (400
nits) |
| Digitizer/Pens |
Projected capacitive
multi-touch |
| Keyboard/keys |
Onscreen |
| Navigation |
Touch |
| Expansion
slots |
1 1 micro-SD card, 1 SIM
(both internal) |
| Housing |
ABS plastic with rubberized
bumper areas and overmolding |
| Size |
3.2 x 5.2 x 0.86 inches (82 x
132 x 22 mm) |
| Weight |
8.9 ounces (252 grams) as
tested with standard battery |
| Temperature |
-4° to °140 degrees
Fahrenheit (-20° to 60°C) |
| Ingress
Protection |
IP65 (totally dust-proof,
protected against low pressure water jets from
all directions) |
| Drop |
4 feet to
concrete |
| Tumbling |
NA |
| Humidity |
95% RH (non
condensing) |
| ESD |
NA |
| Regulatory |
CE, FCC class
B |
| Power |
Rechargeable Li-Polymer
3.7Volt/2,400 mAH 9.6 watt-hour ("8.6
hours") |
| Camera |
2-megapixel (front),
5-megapixel with LED illuminator
(rear) |
| Sensors |
3-axis acceleration, 3-axis
magnetic field, orientation sensor, light,
proximity, gravity |
| Communication |
802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth
v2.1 + EDR, u-Blox GPS; optional 3.5G WWAN
module |
| Interface |
1 x micro-USB, 1 x 3.5mm
audio for microphone and
headset |
| Price |
inquire |
| Webpage |
Winmate
E430T product page |
| Brochure |
Winmate
E430T brochure (PDF) |
| Contact |
mailto:Sales1@winmate.com.tw?subject=Seen
on RuggedPCReview
Winmate Communication Inc.
9F, No. 111-6,
Shing-De Road,
San-Chung City,
Taipei,
Taiwan 241, R.O.C.
Fax: +886-2-8511-0211
Web: http://www.winmate.com.tw/
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