Powerful, rugged 4.3-inch Android enterprise terminal for data collection and communication
(by Conrad H. Blickenstorfer)

The Opticon H27 was introduced in August 2014 as a powerful Android based barcode scanner and enterprise terminal for applications such as field sales and service, postal, retail settings, healthcare and similar. It's a ruggedized handheld with an integrated industrial-grade 1D barcode scanner or 2D imager, but one that's slimmer and lighter than an industrial device while being significantly tougher than any consumer smartphone.

The hardware is based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8960 with dual 1.5GHz ARMv7 Krait cores and an integrated Adreno 225 GPU, a chip used in numerous high-end smartphones. There's 1GB of DDR2 RAM and 8GB of Flash, and storage is expandable by up to 32GB via a user-accessible microSDHC card slot. Perhaps a sign of the changing times, the software is based not on Windows Mobile as in prior Opticon handhelds, but on Android 4.2.2.

The H27 measures 3 x 5.8 inches, a footprint no larger than that of today's rapidly growing smartphones. The device is three quarters of an inch thick — very thin for a rugged device. The H27 weighs 8.5 ounces, about twice that of a consumer smartphone, but still quite light. The display measures 4.3 inches diagonally and has full 800 x 480 pixel SVGA resolution. It uses capacitive multi-touch, as is to be expected for a modern handheld with Android. Since this is a rugged professional device, the display is a bit brighter than that of a standard smartphone (350 nits). The display uses the tough Gorilla glass v2, and there's anti-reflective coating for better viewability outdoors.

Since one of the H27's major intended tasks is data capture device, it's available with either an integrated 1D diode laser scanner or 1D/2D imager with green aiming LED, an NFC reader, GPS and GLONASS for rapid positioning, and there's also a 5mp rear-facing auto-focus camera with flash illuminator for documenting.

For communication, there's dual-band 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, and GPRS/EDGE as well as 3.5G UMTS HSPA+ WWAN. On the wired side there's USB OTG (On The Go). Wired LAN is available via a USB-to_Ethernet adapter cable.