HTC |
HTC's Advantage is part smartphone, part mini-laptop with a lot of features crammed inside.
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At first glance, HTC’s Advantage could be mistaken for two devices. It’s either a very large cell phone or an amazing wireless PDA. Luckily, there’s no need to choose.
The Advantage X7501 is a 3G, GSM-based smart, world phone. You don't hold it to your ear - it's used as a speakerphone or with a headset. It also has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS satellite location finding built inside and runs on the Windows Mobile 6 operating system.
The Advantage is a two-piece device. The main unit is about 5 inches long, 4 inches wide and two-thirds of an inch deep and weighs about 13 ounces. It has a touch screen and a thin (0.16 inch) QWERTY keyboard that attaches magnetically to the main unit. It also covers the touch-sensitive screen while allowing you to see when messages arrive through a transparent window. The Advantage comes with a magnetic leather case to hold both pieces in place.
Inside the main unit are a fast processor and a graphics chip. There is a great 5-inch screen and a big, rechargeable battery which, on paper, is good for 4.5-5.5 hours of talk time and up to 300 hours of standby. In real-life, the battery lasted a full day for me before needing a charge.
As for memory, there’s 256MB of ROM and 128MB of SDRAM. And, you would also expect, and you’ll find, a miniSD card a lot for extra storage.
But the keyword is extra – because the Advantage also has an 8GB hard drive inside. That gives you lots of room to store photos and videos you take with the built-in 3-megapixel camera (with autofocus and flash).
The 5-inch screen is your camera’s viewfinder and also helps when you’re browsing Web sites. Thanks to HTC’s ViewFLO motion sensing technology, the Advantage moves the screen when you tilt the screen up, down, left or right. After a minute or so of getting used to the sensation I was able to control my Web surfing with just a slight flick of the wrist.
The first thing I did when I got the test unit was to set-up my corporate e-mail. I was stunned by what happened next. Within 10 seconds the Advantage had synched all my e-mail, addresses and notes. Not 10 minutes – 10 seconds. I have never tested a smartphone that worked so quickly.
After that I sat down to read and answer my e-mail for a few hours. I found the Advantage’s keyboard easy to use and I never felt the need to open my laptop instead.
The built-in GPS is pretty great, too. The Advantage comes with the company’s own QuickGPS software – which I found was merely OK. I also downloaded Google Maps, which works with the device’s GPS. This combination was fabulous. It flawlessly guided me anywhere I needed to go while I was travelling in Seattle, earlier this month.
This is the first smartphone I’ve seen with a TV/video out port. I watched a video, stored on the Advantage’s hard drive, being played on a large, flat-screen TV. I wouldn’t call what I saw a high-definition experience – but it looked pretty darned good for what it was. This feature could be a boon to businesspeople who would prefer to carry a small device to make a presentation to a group of people at the same time.
Unfortunately, surfing the Web on the Advantage is another story. The Internet Explorer Mobile browser is speedy but it only provides ‘mobile’ versions of Web sites. HTC also provides a version of the Opera browser which is not a whole lot better. Neither comes close to using Safari on an iPhone.
The Advantage, with all its features, does not come cheap. The Advantage is currently available through CompUSA and Amazon.com for a whopping $900.
But, when you consider separate the prices of separate devices, such as the $500 Palm charged for their PDA with a hard drive a few years ago, a Windows Mobile smartphone ($200-400), a portable GPS unit (another $200-$400) plus a 3MP camera ($100-200) – then add a faster processor and the convenience of putting it all in one package - $900 is not bad.
A number of business people I’ve showed it to thought the price, while not cheap, was fair.
