I’ve owned a HP iPAQ rx3715 Mobile Media Companion Pocket PC (PDA) since March 2005 and I have to say that I absolutely love it, because not only was it one of the best Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition Pocket PC’s available on the market at that time, but it was suited to all my entertainment needs, from taking photos and uploading them directly to the internet while listening to some music (either with its media centre or using it as a remote control) too emailing and chatting to my friends on Windows Live Hotmail and Messenger.

But unfortunately my beloved mobile/media device died on me the other day (don’t you just hate it when that happens) and I’m not really sure how it happened, as it seems like the inside part of the touch screen has cracked and I haven’t dropped it or anything like that, in fact I only left it on the side the night before and in the morning I woke up and switched it on and it was like that!

I’ve been doing some research and it could have possible been caused by either temperature or a crashed/frozen application/program which was still running in the memory when switched off into standby, as silly as it may seem to some, it could have possible been the crashed/frozen application problem as that night just before switching it off, Internet Explorer froze up after trying to load a fairly large size of data/information from a website.

Though at that point in time I thought nothing about it and thought IE had been closed before I switched it off, it could be possible that it was still running in the background, what do you think could this have been the cause?

Here’s what the screen looks like at the moment when I turn it on.

And right now I’m not sure what to do as the warranty has obviously ran out so I will either be paying for any repairs carried out by HP or Parts brought from here or here to do it myself.

However at the £50 – £100 price range I’m not sure if it’s worth it, would I be better saving up and buying a newer Windows Mobile Pocket PC/PDA or should I just go ahead and get the screen fixed?

Or maybe I should save up and buy a better Smartphone/Pocket PC Phone than my current T-Mobile SDAII, that way I’ll be a little lighter as I won’t have to carry both a Pocket PC and a Mobile Phone, however if I go for this solution, it has to have near enough the same functionalities as the HP iPAQ rx3715 and the T-Mobile SDA2, that includes WiFi and Camera and possibly the stylus pen though I’d be ok without remote control feature, though I would defiantly need a SD Card Reader in it or some kind of way of adding more storage.

So yeah I kind of like the idea of having just that one device, especially if it has Windows Mobile 5.0 or better yet Windows Mobile 6.0, but I’m not sure if I can afford it to be honest, not with all the features I want. 🙁

So hey let me know what you think! 🙂