HTC Snap / Dash II Hands-On
I used to have an HTC S620 / Dash as my daily phone and found it to be a near perfect Blackberry-form-factor Windows Mobile smartphone. It was light with a great keyboard and decent screen. The main omissions were a lack of 3G and high resolution camera.
HTC is hoping to fix that in a snap, The Snap to be precise. As a replacement for the S620 / Dash, the Snap is immediately recognizable as a member of the same family with a near identical form factor. Here’s a quick hands-on of the Snap.
Addressing my wish list above, the Snap offers 7.2MB/sec HSDPA compared to the S620’s slow-ish EDGE. WiFi b/g is carried over from the S620, but might not be enabled on all carriers; it was disabled on the Sprint example here.
The Snap also winds the onboard camera optics up to 2MP, which is no great shakes compared to the 5 or 8MP offerings of other smartphones available today. Why is HTC so reluctant to implement leading edge cameras into its cellphones?
The keyboard follows the solid functionality of the S620 with an even better feel. Keys are raised in the center and easy to press. The revised layout placing keys similarly to a computer QWERTY rather than a vertical alignment works well.
A2DP and AVRCP Bluetooth profiles are also implemented, as on the S620, to give stereo bluetooth headsets control of calls and music playback.
On Sprint’s network data downloaded to Internet Explorer
significantly faster than my S620 on AT&T’s EDGE connection. The Snap’s 528MHz processor also made the Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard experience feel snappy compared to the S620’s 200MHz processor, which I admittedly throttle back to 160MHz to save battery power.
So why no Windows Mobile 6.5 on the Snap…? This is certainly disappointing, especially given all the 6.5 online chatter currently. Hopefully a 6.5 upgrade option will be available for the Snap in time. My experience of an early 6.5 Pro touch-enabled build on the HTC Touch Pro has been extremely positive.
Is the Snap worth an upgrade for current S620 / Dash owners? Definitely for high data users, maybe for others. The S620 was already a gem of a device and the Snap offers even more of the same. It just does it, well, a bit snappier.
Neil Berman
theONbutton@CES – Blackberry Curve 8900 announced and fondled
Blackberry’s Curve has been a popular smartphone to date, balancing size, weight and features to good effect. The new Curve 8900 seeks to capitalize on its predecessor’s success, adding a 3.2MP camera, a Bold style screen and revised keyboard. The new Curve 8900 is due to be released in the US in February on T-Mobile, although with EDGE data only unlike the Bold which offers 3G on AT&T.
Gallery…
Neil Berman
Blackberry Storm Quick Hands-on Review
Reasons to like the Storm:
SurePress screen is 100% better to type on than the iPhone’s static glass
Smaller than the Bold with a great screen size
Decent for the Internet compared to the Bold…
Reasons to wish they’d worked a bit harder:
…as long as you wait a looooong time for the page to complete loading. Storm Internet speed is crushed by iPhone and Opera on WinMo.
SurePress screen is 100% worse to type on than the Bold/Fuze/Epix/most things
Slower than any smartphone I’ve used recently…right up to the moment it crashed
Neil Berman
BlackBerry Flips Out
Following on from BlackBerry’s dominance of the corporate market, RIM has recently been turning its attention to retail consumers. RIM is positioning its BlackBerry Curve and Bold as complete work/play devices and the Pearl Flip 8220 under review here goes in a different direction; it’s a BlackBerry for those who want a cellphone which doesn’t looks like a BlackBerry.
Compact for a BlackBerry
The Flip’s compact form is made possible by RIM’s two-letters-on-a-key Qwerty system, called SureType. The keyboard allows the Flip to be very compact, although the base is quite thick. The clamshell flip design means that the screen also has to be smaller than a regular BlackBerry. The familiar BlackBerry trackball is also present. Closing the phone reveals a good looking lid housing the camera and exterior screen. This is definitely the Flip’s best angle.
What’s it like in use?
In use, I really noticed the reduction in screen size. Where the Curve is good for email and the Pearl is just fine, the Flip requires a lot of scrolling to view long messages. But it does work, and if you prefer SMS or short instant messages to email, then the screen would not be a problem.
The keypad is responsive and SureType works well for me. The trackball is mounted a bit low for my liking though. There’s just not enough contact area compared to the Pearl and as a result large amounts of scrolling can turn into hard work.
The Flip’s internet browser loaded mobile sites fairly slowly and when a page is ready the trackball performs as a useful mouse pointer. The map application was even slower unfortunately, almost to the point of being unusable.
Call quality was fine and the Flip has bluetooth for headset hook-ups.
Should you get one?
The BlackBerry Flip is pretty on the outside and sometimes frustrating on the inside. It is definitely a compromise, but it looks great and if for a light data user it might be a good call.
HTC Excalibur S620 / T-Mobile Dash Review
Brushed aluminum finish looks smart
HTC comes up with some great names for its cellphones. Diamond, Kaiser and Wizard have all figured in their recent line-up. The Excalibur looks a bit different from King Arthur’s mythical sword, but can it slay the competition in the same way?
Taking the smartphone out of the box it’s immediately obvious that this is one device which looks way better in real life than on the web. The Excalibur screams quality with a brushed aluminum and soft-feel black finish encasing a flush fitting screen. It’s light too at 130 grams. The battery cover hides the SIM and Micro SD card slots. Other specs include a 200MHz processor, WiFi b/g, EDGE (no HSPA unfortunately), Windows Mobile and of course the music loving stereo bluetooth.
Keypad has good tactile feedback
The Excalibur’s Blackberry/Palm style keyboard has tightly packed raised keys which illuminate blue when the phone’s backlight is on. The keys on these devices are always a matter of taste, personally I find the Excalibur’s okay with plenty of tactile feedback but inferior to HTC’s own TyTN and Kaiser (AT&T Tilt) with their wider and larger keys. The Excalibur could also do with a couple more assignable keys. There are ones for email, internet and the camera but I’d also like ones to assign to Windows Media Player, the connections manager and the task manager for easy application switching.
Which leads me to the JOGGR slidy-thing on the right side of the screen is a curious surface, which offers up/down controls as well as two assignable buttons. Some carriers choose to disable this control surface, which to be honest I can understand. It’s a great idea but too easy to brush it accidentally which can be annoying. Once I got the hang of the JOGGR it did become useful, but might be too fiddly to win fans during a five minute in-store test drive. I would have preferred a hardware wheel and buttons.
Powering up the Excalibur illuminates the stunning 2.4 inch screen, which is a joy to use indoors and out.
2.4 inch screen is bright and sharp
Whilst not readable in direct sunlight, it is possible to use this phone outdoors on a bright day. The flush fitting screen gives a paper flat image, but is also very exposed if the cellphone in jiggling about in a pocket next to some keys. There was a protective belt holster in my box, which is a useful screen preserving accessory.
The version I’m using has Ricky Wyatt’s Windows Mobile 6 ROM with a few added extras taking it to 6.1 spec, such as the newer Windows Live client which does a great job of pushing mails to the device for certain web-based non-POP3 email clients. Another sweet tool on the ROM is an over/underclocking tool for the the 200MHz processor, which allows manually forced power saving and power enhancement. This is a great addition as most usage only needs 150MHz or so, which helps to extend battery life nicely. Running the Excalibur at this speed I was able to listen to music over stereo bluetooth and read the newspapers on AvantGo.
Other tasty morsels in this ROM include Opera Mini which works great on the Excalibur and Resco Explorer which is a good replacement for File Explorer. I also added Google Maps, which renders extremely quickly on the Excalibur compared to my TyTN and scarily pinpointed my location to within one city block.
Excalibur is size zero thin
The sound performance of the Excalibur is up to HTC’s usual high standards overall. Sound quality from the earpiece and microphone both seem fine, although the speaker was a bit tinny and unlikely to break any cellphone records for bass response. The stereo bluetooth paired to my Logitech Freepulse easily and sound quality was exceptionally clear, so you can give those wired adphones back to the twentieth century where they belong. The USB charging port doubles up as a headphone/hands-free port. Whilst there are adaptors available to let you use wired 3.5mm phones, you’ll probably prefer to stick with the stereo bluetooth to avoid dangling wires…after all with a micro sd slot to play with, the Excalibur could store your entire music collection so you might as well look the business while you’re listening.
Battery life was good, and as always was influenced by the amount of wireless connectivity and data usage. Forcing the screen to dim quickly after periods of inactivity also helped. With mixed usage including some WiFi and EDGE data action, voice calls and listening to music over stereo bluetooth I got just over one day before the Excalibur asked to be returned to the lake for some juice.
Can the Excalibur slay the competition? It’s certainly a strong Windows Mobile cellphone, nay very strong when paired with some useful added software. At 130 grams it competes directly with RIM’s Blackberry Curve, which ends in a tie for me with RIM’s solid messaging experience battling the huge Windows Mobile application development community. If you do go for the Excalibur though, it’s a worthy sword to have in the armory.
Neil Berman
Ricky Wyatt’s Excalibur ROM is available at XDA Developers. I do not recommend flashing a ROM onto your cellphone. Flashing a ROM onto your cellphone is done entirely at your own risk, can brick your phone, will most likely invalidate your warranty and might lead to a total freak-out if it goes horribly wrong!!
Thanks to Joan & Alan for this one.
Gallery:
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- Brushed aluminum finish looks smart
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- Keypad has good tactile feedback
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- 2.4 inch screen is bright and sharp
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- Back plate covers battery, SIM and micro SD slot
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- 1.3MP camera is alright, but nothing special
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- USB charging connector doubles as handsfree/headphone output
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- Excalibur is size zero thin
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- Micro SD slot gives huge storage potential
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- Windows Mobile panels include media player
Is everyone just buying iPhones now?
So at&t’s recent smartphone sale got me thinking “Is everyone just buying iPhones now?” A couple of weeks on, and a Fortune article rumors that at&t will be slashing the price of the worst-kept-secret-in-history-and-soon-to-be-released 3G iPhone by a mighty $200 suggests the answer is no. The whole smartphone sector is simply in a Great Depression.
Great news though for those in the market for smartphone. at&t’s recent sale offered the usually $299 Tilt for free on a new contract as a refurbished unit. Other free offerings included the ever popular Blackberry Pearl. With my contract ending soon, a free Tilt sounded good to me, but…
Why the price cutting? Media tales of impending economic doom are probably a factor, but beyond that the 2008 lineup of smartphone releases make current offerings seem like they should come free with breakfast cereals.
Apple, Samsung and smartphone superstar HTC are all expected to get fingers tapping on touch screens due in stores soon.
HTC’s eagerly awaited Diamond has now been announced and packs a VGA TouchFlo screen initially praised as an iPhone beater. 
Their soon to follow Raphael will have similar internals adding a five row Qwerty keyboard, and replaces the current Tilt. Both feature a 2.8 inch screen and 528mhz processor.
Samsung announced its CDMA Glyde this week on Verizon. Reviews have been mixed so far.
After a quick Gotham 360 session at Samsung today, there were no real life units on display yet.
Finally Apple is heavily rumored to be prepping a 3G iPhone for release sometime in late June.
I guess the hordes waiting for a piece of soon-to-be-last-gen tech in Apple’s W14th St store recently weren’t quite as clued-in on forthcoming releases. The store was dry of iPhone stock, presumably remaining supply of the current model is dwindling as 3G unit shipments get prepared. Nevertheless the eager folk in the line remained steadfast in their bizarre quest. The Gizmodo conversation with store staff is entertaining.
Of course the fundamental iPhone problem is likely to remain: only Star Fleet academy graduates can type fast on glass, as Data et al have proved on so many occasions. So 3G or no, I still can’t see Apple eating up the Berry’s slice of the corporate market yet. In fact RIM are fighting back with their sleek new 9000
believed to be YouTube compatible., which has apparently already racked up mighty sales volumes of one unit on eBay. Crackberry has details.
Meanwhile finally coming out of its time warp, T-Mobile announced 3G service on May 1st in the US…for voice. Thanks for nothing. Rumors started coming out of NYC that there was data as well. Great, things are looking up. Looking at my TyTN expectantly to see at least a UMTS connection, I’m disappointed to find the Edge network instead. 
Turns out that T-Mobile are sending 3G data over 1700MHz and a non-standard offshoot of 2100MHz, which is a first. Basically you need a new T-Mobile phone with a radio tuned into exactly the right frequencies. Thanks for absolutely nothing!
Back to at&t and iPhone users can now apparently get WiFi access through the carrier’s hotspot network. Nice that a year after its release iPhone gets access to something that Blackjack, Q, Tilt etc customers have enjoyed for a long time already i.e. high speed data on the move. Well, I say ‘on the move’ but that’s only true if the iPhone moves within the confines of the hotspot.
So with the 3G iPhone just around the corner, 1.0 owners can show off their old skool model by standing outside Starbucks to get their iTunes downloads whilst the newbies walk on by. Only kidding, you know I’m just jealous!
Neil Berman
theONbutton
Turning the world on, one gadget at a time.
