Sneak Peak at the HTC Shift

As I'm writing here now – I'm sitting with a HTC Shift prototype. No not the final – but a late prototype. I had a chance to play with it for a while.

My initial impressions are that it is a really solid device. Much better than I anticipated. The screen tilt stuff works well and you can position the screen as you like. The screen supports is really only 800 x 480 but supports 1024 x 600 resolution – but at 1024x600 it can seem a bit "muddy to look at"

The current model only got a "limited" Windows Mobile 6 built in. No Mobile Office in it. Bit of a shame. But it does support e-mail. I don't know if you can install custom applications like Skype on it. But it is connected to the "pc" part so it will act as a modem in Vista for your Mobile Data Connection. But it does have parts of the HCT Touch (the phone) front screen interface with calendar, clock and weather + direct access to mail. It did not seem to enable the Vista Windows Mobile Sync interface to sync the Windows Mobile part. But one can hope that changes for the final version – so you don't have to double sync your outlook to get calendar and mail in to the Windows Mobile part.

Unfortunately Windows Mobile do only support 640 x 480 – so when in Windows Mobile mode the screen is "enlarged to fill the 600 pixel screen height – but leaves 16:9 equal empty bars at either side.

The mouse works well and the device seems quite snappy. It claims a Vista Performance index of 2.0 which is quite reasonable for such a small pc. But it does have a camera on the front for Skype J and other Web Chat systems. Nice.

But the keyboard is very very small. You can't touch type on it – but tactile feed is great and I do think you can get away with writing on it at a reasonable speed when you get used to it – but 2 finger typing seems best J But a lot better than my Sony UX-90s.

The Pen is a typical HTC "fold out" pen. Not the best really. And I hate not having an active touch screen like on my ThinkPad X60. But newest "rumour" is it will support multi touch for a lot of things. J Fx. Place 2 fingers on screen and move fingers closer together to zoom in – and move them apart to zoom out. Nice touch (no pun intended)

HTC Shift shipping and price

Price point will be the same as the HTC Advantage x7500. So in UAE Dirham – about 5.000. (US$1.362) Shipping is said to start no later than 4 weeks after Gitex. Nice and small christmas gift then :-) More info from Gitex during 8-12 of September. :-)

Will I get one.. Yes I ordered one FIRST in LINE... J It will replace my Sony UX-90 I guess.

more HTC Stuff:
HTC Shift to Launch at Gitex
HTC Advantage X7500 WM6 Official ROM Review

Over and out for today.