HP-49 Series - HP 49g+

In August 2003, HP released the 49g+. This unit had metallic gold coloration and was backward compatible with the HP 49G. Instead of the rubber keyboard found on the HP 49G, this calculator's keyboard had plastic hinges intended to return the feel of older HP calculators, and also included a pouch to protect the unit, similar to those included with older HP models. It was designed and manufactured by Kinpo Electronics for HP.

This calculator featured an entirely new processor architecture, USB and IrDA (infrared) communication, memory expansion via an SD card, and a slightly larger screen, as well as other improvements over the previous model.

The calculator system did not run directly on the new ARM processor, but rather on an emulation layer for the older Saturn processors found in previous HP calculators. This allowed the 49g+ to maintain binary-level compatibility with most of the programs written for the HP 49G calculator, as well as source code-level compatibility with many written for the HP 48 series.

Despite the emulation, the 49g+ was still much faster than any older model of HP calculator. The speed increase over the HP 49G is around 3-7 times depending on the task. It is even possible to run programs written for the ARM processor thus bypassing the emulation layer completely. A port of the GNU C compiler is also available (see HPGCC below).