Specs for the HTC Shift have just been amended and the hard drive capacity has increased to a whopping 60 GB. That’s a pretty impressive stat for any UMPC and here’s a list of other bells and whistles that this sucker boasts
* An Intel Stealy Processor 800 MHz
* Windows Vista Business
* 1 GB of memory
* 1.8 inch 40 or 60 GB HDD
* 207 x 129 x 25 mm
* 800g (with battery)
* 7 inch 800×480 res display
* Slide out QWERTY keyboard
On the downside Vista operating time is only two hours on full battery and as I like to consider a device mobile when it can survive away from a power point for more than three hours, this seems like a bad limitation on what otherwise looks like a very well specced device. The unit seems to be selling for around US$1,450 which is not a bad price either for a well specced UMPC and it should sell like the proverbial hot cakes. However with that battery life, I’m just not interested, anyone else out there gonna take the plunge?
With no official announcement from HTC yet there seems to be plenty of rumours flying around about their latest product, the Kaiser or The Tilt as it’ll be known throughout AT&T stores in the US. I decided to track down all the specs (rumoured or confirmed) that I could find on this little sucker. The results are as follows
Slide and tilt QWERTY keyboard
Touch screen functionality a la HTC Touch
240 x 320 res display
3 Mp camera, a non-camera version will also be available as well as a dual-cam setup
Connectivity - 3G, GPRS, EDGE, video calls and WiFi
The 400 MHz chip along with 128 MB of RAM and 256 MB of ROM could run Windows Mobile 6
5 hours battery powered talk time
The Tilt will be hitting AT&T stores around the end of August/start of September with a rumoured price tag of $300.
I prefer to talk about gadgets and gizmos you can actually get your mits on but I’ve decided to make an exception for the HTC Omni. The second I saw the pictures of this sucker I realised that the Omni just oozes sexiness with its sleek black display unit and hopefully silver keyboard section - the pictures are a bit fuzzy. According to an HTC roadmap obtained by Unwired View, the Omni will be launched in October this year and appears to have all the bells and whistles as well as the looks
* GSM/GPRS/UMTS/HSDPA connectivity
* WVGA 4″ 800×480 px display with external subdisplay
* Windows Mobile 6.0 OS over a 400MHz Samsung SC244X
* 256 ROM, 128 RAM and microSD memory card slot
* TV and VGA out
* Dimensions: 130 x 81 x16 mm
* Wi-Fi b/g, USB and Bluetooth connectivity
I must admit it does appear have all the bases covered and with a QWERTY keyboard it’s bridging that gap between mobile and laptop where so few have dared to tread. I’m looking forward to checking out some video reviews of this puppy later in the year.
Having compared the Touch to the iPhone recently, I decided to dig around and find a decent video clip of the TouchFlo technology in action. I found this snippet from Shiny Media, presented by a Microsoft zealot and an HTC non-believer, so whilst there were no fisticuffs at least we were presented with a relatively unbiased review.
The TouchFlo technology did look good in action, but the QWERTY touch pad? Man, who has fingers that small! I know you have a stylus but surely they could have come up with something better for input. Having said that there was an interesting quote in the video from HTC regarding the Touch’s market
It’s not designed for business people, it’s going to be for the multi-media user.
I guess that says it all really, a great cellphone/mp3 player but not a real pocket PC.
There appears to much ado about the latest cellphone offering from HTC called ‘Touch’ in the tech blog world at the moment. It’s being touted as a potential competitor to the iPhone and with its whizzy ‘TouchFLO’ technology you may think that HTC are onto something here. Certainly a few sites believe so
Daily Tech
HTC’s touch-screen handset could give iPhone a run for its money
HTC Corp. has just launched the HTC Touch, a smartphone whose fingertip-oriented control system was clearly created to compete with Apple’s iPhone.
However I’m not so easily convinced, sure the Touch looks good in ‘wasabi’ and ’soft black’ colour choices but what about the numbers, how does it really stack up against the iPhone. Well let’s take a peek at them shall we?
HTC Touch
iPhone
Screen size
2.8"
3.5"
Screen res
240 x 320
320 x 480
GSM
900, 1800, 1900
850, 900, 1800, 1900
Camera
2 Mp
2 Mp
Talktime
5 hours
5 hours
Size
100 x 58 x 14mm
115 x 61 x 12mm
Weight
112g
135g
Memory
1GB microSD
4GB or 8GB
Sure the Touch is smaller and lighter but at the guts of it there’s less memory for your tunes and less visual display for your vids. The final kicker, how much moola will I have to part with to be Touched? It will sell in Europe for 449 Euros which is about US$600, the price of an 8GB iPhone. Hmmm, brave try HTC but I don’t think Apple execs will be Touching the alarm button with this release. Roll on June 29th.
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