Powerful, rugged 5-inch Android enterprise terminal for data collection and communication
(by Conrad H. Blickenstorfer)

The Opticon H-28 was introduced in April 2018 as a scanning, analyzing and service solution for industries within a wide range of sectors including logistics, postal, healthcare, retail, industrial and transportation among others. It's a ruggedized handheld with an integrated industrial-grade 2D imager, but one that's slimmer and lighter than traditional industrial data capture devices while being significantly tougher than any consumer smartphone.

The hardware is based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 with no fewer than eight ARM Cortex A53 CPU cores running at up to 1.5GHz, and an integrated Qualcomm Adreno 405 graphics processing unit. There's 2GB of DDR3 RAM and 16GB of eMMC Flash, with storage being expandable via a user-accessible microSDHC card slot. For an operating environment, the Opticon H-28 uses Android version 6.0.1 "Marshmallow."

The H-28 measures 3 x 6.2 inches, a footprint the size of an Apple iPhone 6/7/8 Plus. The device is two thirds of an inch thick — which is quite thin for a rugged device. The H-28 weighs 10.4 ounces, more than a consumer smartphone, but still quite manageable. The display measures 5 inches diagonally and has FHD resolution, which generally means 1920 x 1080 pixels. If that's the case, it'd be right up there with premium current smartphones in sharpness. It uses capacitive multi-touch, as is standard for a modern Android handheld. The display uses the tough Gorilla glass, but the specs do not include a nits rating or information about coatings.

Since one of the H-28's major intended tasks is data capture device, it's available with an integrated Opticon 1D/2D imager with green aiming LED (Opticon also includes a software development kit and comprehensive scanner symbologies documentation), an NFC reader, and GPS and GLONASS for rapid positioning. The handheld has two cameras, 5mp in the front, and an impressive 16mp rear auto-focus camera with flash illuminator for documenting.

For communication, there's dual-band 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/r WiFi, Bluetooth 4.1 LE, and optional WWAN (WCDMA, GSM, TDD LTE, FDD TLE). On the wired side there's USB OTG (On The Go). Wired LAN is available via a USB-to-Ethernet adapter cable. The standard battery is good for about nine hours; an optional extended battery for twice that.