HTC Shift Battery Details 7.4v 2700 mAh

Finally I got the details about the current battery.

Had another chance to play with the Shift – and I still like it. It might NOT be the shipping battery – but feast your eyes on it.

Seems like quite efficient machine in my book.

I have cut away the serial number.

In the recent model i played with – the Sync between the "Non WM6 WM6 with HTC Shift Vista Windows Mobile Sync Center seemed to work."

Still no browser though – only messages (email/txt), calendar and weather stuff.

Let us plug in Opera J PLEASE and let it use the full screen.

HTC Athena / Advantage X7500 WM6 officially available

Get WM6 for X7500

Now the upgrade is available for all WWE editions. Register at www.htc.com to download the WM6 update.

You can read my comments here

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.

HTC Athena /Advantage / HTC X7500 WM6 Review

HTC X7500 Windows Mobile 6 (WM6) First Impressions

As you might have read, I just got the upgrade to the HTC Athena / HTC X7500 to Windows Mobile 6. It is an official ROM – named "shipping". The full file name of the ROM is RUU_Athena_HTC_WWE_2.21.405.

So I guess if you keep searching on Google for RUU_Athena_HTC_WWE – you might find it popping up somewhere very very soon. But I can't share this ROM with you L since I want to maintain my great relationship with my HTC contacts. So don't even bother to ask J

Release date? My guesstimate is end of this week or beginning of next. The file is build time stamped the 21. August J so I guess HTC is just waiting for final go before official release.

The WM6 Version Numbers

OS Version : CE OS 5.2.1238 Build 17745.0.2.3
Radio – 1.50
ROM Version : 2.21.405.2
ROM Date : 07/20/07

Initial Impression of WM6 for HTC Advantage X7500

Well the news and improvements are small and but some of my issues with the X7500/Athena has been resolved, but the most annoying "feature" is still the same. Namely not TRUE OS supported VGA support despite screen being 640 x 480. Now if you are only surfing on Internet it does not matter at all. But if you want to use the X7500 as a desktop "replacement" from time to time – it is really annoying that you cannot utilize the high screen resolution. I had really hoped that with WM6 native support for 640x480 that this would have been resolved. L

Open Mobile Excel and you only got 5 x 8 Rows to work in and all menu texts are oversized for a 5" screen. My Nokia E90 – has a slightly larger resolution (800x352) but manages to present me with 14 x13 rows of data and that is still readable.

Open Word – and your typing is great if you are near sighted. But everything again is "oversized" and not really great to work on.

Mail – is also oversized and not using the great real estate the screen offers.

What a shame – It actually turns a potential business tool in to a toy, which for me is a total deal breaker and therefore my X7500 goes up for sale, and I'll stick to my Nokia E90 for the time being. (and get the HTC Shift when that comes out..)

Another thing missing from my ROM is the VoIP part of WM6. HTC has some issues including it – so I hope another upgrade is on the way.

Another thing that would have been nice is the "HTC Touch" front screen, to which I have grown rather fond. But that is not included in this ROM. So only the TyTN II / Kaiser will get that it seems. (Well officially anyway)

Last thing that does not really bother me – but is "the talk of forums" is the powerbar only moves in 10% steps – and with the new firmware this has not changed. Still 0-10-20-30-40-50-60-70-80-90-100%... Nothing in between.

Last bug just found.. I got 3 SMS's while writing this. Read them –and noticed after a while that I still had one "Unread" SMS. But none unread in my Inbox. I deleted all SMS's – but still shows 1 unread.:-)

But on to the good things:

• The Touch Screen works a lot better. Much better finger control and more consistent "pressure sensitivity". Before when pressing on screen – the device would ignore finger presses if you was not careful. This issue has been resolved.
  
• Phone seems to react quite a lot quicker.
  
• Windows Update is working now – but did not find any updates J
  
• Wi-Fi seems to work a lot better than before. When streaming from ORB before i could never get "re-buffer" free streams at more than 160 kbps. Now I can do 320 kbps without a hitch. Coverage test will follow later.
  

This was my Initial Impressions – out with the X7500 for now... And let's see if someone can make a High Res WM6 device where all the applications are using the big screen as they should. (Remember Windows 2.11?...)

I really look forward to Gitex J - greeting from Dubai.