The ViewSonic V37’s specs are very similar to many other Pocket PC PDAs on the market. At the heart of the V37 is a 400MHz Intel XScale processor which provides more than enough horse power for applications such as video and audio playback on the Pocket PC.

What is of interest is the memory layout of the V37. The V37 utilizes 64 MB of ROM and 64 MB of SDRAM RAM. Sounds pretty normal right? Well here’s where it gets interesting. We’ll start with the ROM:

36MB of the FLASH ROM is used for file storage called “My Flash Disk” as shown in this picture here:

That leaves 28MB of ROM space for the OS which of course isn’t nearly enough for the Pocket PC OS. Thus, ViewSonic places an image of the OS in SDRAM which consumes 24MB of the 64MB SDRAM. Another 3.5MB of the 64 MB SDRAM space is allocated for drivers and thus that leaves 36.5 MB of available space for user programs and extra storage space. (note that these numbers apply to the US and European models – the Asian models require more space for the OS due to the larger amounts of data used). Compare this to the iPAQ h2210 which allocates a smaller chunk of SDRAM for the OS and you’ll notice that a good portion of the Pocket PC 2002 OS resides in main memory on the V37. This can partially explain the relatively robust performance of the PPC 2002 OS on the V37.

The ViewSonic V37 has a decent 3.5” transflective screen now commonly found on many modern PDAs. The screen isn’t nearly as bright as the screen found on the HP h2210 PDA. Here are pictures comparing both screens with the brightness pushed up to the highest setting.

As you can see the ViewSonic V37 is dimmer than the HP iPAQ h2210. The display also has a very slight yellowish tint which isn’t too noticeable under most conditions except under some low light scenarios. However the screen is very usable and the text is fairly clear and sharp. I don’t think you’ll be dissatisfied by the display.

I thought I would show some pictures of the AC adapter accessories that ViewSonic packages for the V37. As you can see below, there are several types of plugs that come shipped with the V37. You can remove the existing prongs from the plug and then attach an appropriate prong depending on what region of the world you’re in – Kudos to ViewSonic for this addition.

AC Adapter and prongs	Slide the prong piece out
and replace it with a new one	Side angle without prongs in place

Here's a shot of everything that you get with the ViewSonic V37:

All the accessories	and the case