Smartphone, GPS & PDA Reviews and Articles

According to the analyst Moe Tanabian hired by IBB Consulting (one of the first persons who actually saw the first Android opreating HTC Dream) confirms that the launch of HTC Dream will still occur this year in November, in spite of all problems and complications the Android developers encounterd in the past months. He also tells that it is not sure if the first Android OS will come with Microsoft Exchange preinstalled. Hopefully Google will soon announce something, so that we can finally stop making supositions.

Read Moe Tanabian’s full declaration.

It seemes that some pictures and information of the new Palm Treo Pro accidentaly got published on Palm.com, just long enough for some guys to catch snapshots them and get them published all around the world.

If the rumours are telling the truth, the PDA shown in the pictures above (the second one in the first picture) should be Palm’s unlaunched PDA Treo Pro, which will probably have a 1500 mAh battery, a 400Mhz proccesor, 256 ROM and 128 RAM + latest technologies and features as Wi-fi, GPS, Full Tri-band 3G and Quad-band GSM. It is also said that Palm Treo Pro will have a 2 megapixel camera plus a 3.5mm Earphone connector, not to mention the microsd slot that will suport up to 32 gb sdhc.

In order to view all Palm Treo Pro leaked pictures and information we suggest you to visit this topic located on the Wmexperts.com Discussion Board.

It showed up about yesterday on the Global Certification Forum and from most of our speculations Xda Serra is the O2 name for HTC Touch Pro.

Untill today O2 hasn’t confirmed this information, but frankley there is no other option that this one left. Looking forward to get a release date of Xda Serra and more technical specifications, in case it’s not the name of HTC Touch Pro..

The scene of the PDA market can sometimes be highly confusing. On one side there is the mighty iPhone 3G where as to counter it are winmo devices like the Samsung Omnia i900, HTC’s Touch Diamond. Well these devices are good, but for a serious business user these devices almost mean nothing. Yes, nothing because they don’t come with any dedicated hardware keys. So all that big touchscreen real estate they talk about has to be shared with the virtual keyboard and in case you have big chubby fingers, then those devices are almost useless for you.

There are a few devices with external slide out keyboard coming to market in near future like Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X1 (designed for SE by HTC itself) and HTC’s very own Touch Pro.According to the official SE announcements, the X1 won’t be available anytime sooner than September this year, which in any case would be further delayed seeing the status of unstable firmware reports of X1 leaking out on internet. That puts HTC Touch Pro in commanding position as it is going to be launched this August by HTC and since the brand is quite popular and well known, we don’t expect them to delay any official launch. While we are waiting for the PDA to appear in our local stores, we present to you our HTC Touch Pro Review:
HTC Touch Pro is one heck of a kick-ass device. The hardware combination is absolutely amazing. Built with a Qualcomm 528 MHz, 288MB RAM, 512MB ROM and a 64MB dedicated Graphics chip, the device will function amaizingly fast, even when there are many applications running at the same time, since it has the same configuration as the HTC Touch Diamond we expect it to be as fast and powerful as HTC Diamond.

The phone measures 102 x 51 x 18 mm and weighs 165 g, a bit more than the HTC Diamond. The Pro is armed with a 2.8inches screen with VGA resolution, which is the same as HTC Touch Diamond. Comparing to HVGA resolution of iPhone and QVGA resolution of Omnia, the VGA resolution of Pro is going to be delight as it will allow more data to be displayed with crispier images.

And here is the bad news now: It has been officially confirmed by HTC that the devices would be available as tri-band, with separate versions available for North American and rest of the world markets. That means if you own the European version of the HTC Pro and afterwards fly to the US, your $1000 piece of hi-tech gadget simply won’t work on their 850mhz band or even if it does with the custom Rom pack, but in that case won’t be able to use 3G frequencies there. A disappointing fact indeed as most phones these days offer seamless connectivity to all 3G and HSPA bands throughout world. Further to agonize, the North American version won’t be available anytime sooner than December this year.

Speaking of the HTC Touch Pro’s design.. it is simply superb, with a 5 row slide-out QWERTY keyboard, it looks just like the HTC Diamond, only that it’s a bit thicker. The keys are supposed to be quite big and give a nice feedback when pressed. The best part is that the numeric keys have dedicated buttons of their own much like the normal keyboards on computers. The interface is same as the one on HTC Diamond, with gorgeously made TouchFLO 3D taking the guard there. Navigation, searching, playing media, zooming-in and out of pictures is done through gesture based input.

The PDA is equipped with 3.2megapixel camera with AF and LED flash. Since it is a business oriented phone, so that could be one explanation why it has not been equipped with now-industry-standard-5megapixel camera. The back of the PDA is similar to HTC Touch Diamond with the HTC Diamond cut motif. For comparisons, Samsung’s Omnia is equipped with 5megapixel camera, Apple’s iPhone is with 2megapixel camera and the SE’s X1 would be having 3.2megapixel camera sensor. But there is also a second cam on the HTC Pro, a VGA one intended for Video telephony and 3g (Damn it, the developers didn’t forgot anything!).
The phone is so similar to Touch Diamond that till the time you don’t pull out the keyboard, you won’t feel it any different from the Htc Diamond. The only major difference apart from the keyboard it has with Htc Diamond is that it has a microSD card slot supporting up to 16GB of micro SDHC cards while HTC Diamond comes with only a 4GB internal storage

Is it an advantage? Well, it depends on how you perceive it, but in our HTC Touch Pro Review we would like to mention that the card based storage is a better solution for those who need a lot of storage, first of all cause they can always use it with a card reader which offers better transfer rates as compared to mass storage profile on phone and secondly they can always carry more than one card to increase the storage space by slipping in a new card when the current one gets full.

The HTC Touch Pro is also equipped with a regular 1-pin USB port which doubles up as TV-out port, with cable sold separately, a USB cable port and hands-free connectivity port.

Battery life is going to be really very good as it comes with industry un-surpassed 1340mAH Li-Ion battery. For facts, the HTC Diamond is equipped with meager 900mAH battery as standard and still manages to give standby of almost 2 days with decent amount of usage.
Other standard PDA features of the HTC Touch Pro are: the loud speakerphone, GPS and A-GPS, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, Auto UI rotate with built in accelerometer, 3G and HSDPA 7.2Mbps support, multi format supporting windows media player 11,Word, Excel, PowerPoint reader suite, Mobile Internet Explorer and Outlook Mobile.
If you have been an admirer of HTC’s TyTn, then probably you would drool over this phone. Or if you have ever been put away with the idea of on-screen virtual keyboards, in that case you will be pleased to own this device.

And finally, here’s the end of our HTC Touch Pro Review: the price. There’s no chance for this PDA to be any cheaper than HTC Diamond which retails for $700-1000 across world. We expect it to be in the next months available for about $900.

HTC Touch Pro technical Specifications:

1. Processor: Qualcomm® MSM7201A™ 528 MHz
2. Operating: System Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional
3. Memory ROM: 512 MB
4. RAM: 288 MB
5. Dimensions: 102 mm (L) X 51 mm (W) X 18.05 mm (T)
6. Weight: 165 g (with the battery)
7. Display: 2.8-inch TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen with VGA resolution
8. Network: HSDPA/WCDMA: Europe/Asia: 900/2100 MHz Tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE: Europe/Asia: 900/1800/1900 MHz
9. Transfer rate: Up to 384 kbps up-link and 7.2 Mbps down-link speed
10. Device Control TouchFLO™ 3D
11. Touch-sensitive navigation control
12. Keyboard Slide-out 5-row QWERTY keyboard
13. GPS and A-GPS ready
14. Connectivity Bluetooth® 2.0 with EDR
15. Wi-Fi®: IEEE 802.11 b/g
16. HTC ExtUSB™ (11-pin mini-USB 2.0, audio jack, and TV Out* in one)
17. Main camera: 3.2 megapixel camera with auto-focus and flash light
18. Second camera: VGA CMOS camera
19. Audio Built-in microphone, speaker and FM radio with RDS
20. Ring tone supported formats: MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, WAV, and AMR-NB 40 polyphonic, standard MIDI format 0 and 1 (SMF)/SP MIDI
21. Battery Rechargeable Lithium-ion or Lithium-ion polymer battery
    Capacity: 1340 mAh
22. Talk time: Up to 397 minutes for WCDMA or Up to 485 minutes for GSM
23. Standby time: Up to 503 hours for WCDMA  Up to 406 hours for GSM
24. Video call time: Up to 201 minutes for WCDMA
25. Expansion Slot microSD™ memory card (SD 2.0 compatible)
26. AC Adapter Voltage range/frequency: 100 ~ 240V AC, 50/60 Hz
27. DC output: 5V and 1A

Hopefully our HTC Touch Pro Review managed to help you out in understanding what HTC Touch Pro actually is and what it can and can’t do.

Later edit: here’s the short, romanian version of our HTC Touch Pro Review

The price for Winterface is still the same, but from now on you are going to give out the same amount of money for a better version of Winterface (too bad for those who already spent $19.95 on the initial Winterface application.

The new Winterface PDA application comes with some fixed bugs + few new features: notification for upcoming events, a new cool theme and from now on you will be able to add any file to your Smartphone or PDA main screen.

Link: iwindowsmobile

This is the first Resco IDGuard version that also works on touch screen devices. Resco IDGuard helps you protect your business and personal files (doc, xls,ppt,pdf, html, images and even audio and video files!) from your PDA by a password it also spares you from the need of memorating all your IDs and passwords offer you acces to all of them trough one unique master password.
Why the developers think that RescoID is a better PDA software tham SplashID:

« The ability to encrypt so many different kinds of documents/files and view them straight from within IDGuard is a tremendous advantage. »

Download Resco IDGuard for Resco.net, unfortunately you can only get a 14 day trial, the full version license costs $19.95.

It looks like HTC confirmed once again that the company is not having ,,structural problems to incorporate Google’s demanded feature set”’ and that the Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer is still in plan for the launch of the first Android Smartphone.

In spite of all the rumors that traveled across the Internet in the past weeks, that Google might not manage to develop Google Android OS entirely this year, the truth is that there is no proof of delay, as specially after HTC declared that they will surely launch the first Android Smartphone this year.

Via

Looks like a second breaktrough PDA is starting to be comercialised by a major mobile operator this month: we are talking about Vodafone UK which will most probably start selling the HTC Touch Pro some day this month and most probably untill september it will be available in countries all around the globe.

The price of the new PDA was not published yet, on Vodafone we were only able to spot some technical specifications of the HTC Touch Pro and the message “This phone is coming soon”.

Via Coolsmartphone.com

Here’s another very nice HTC Diamond game I’d like to share with you:
Sensor Maze generates various mazes trough which you have to guide a small blue ball from to the finish line. In order to do this you won’t have to push any buttons but only to spin your HTC Diamond in the air. The PDA’s tilt sensor will detect the PDA’s position and will apply the force of gravity to the ball out of Sensor Maze at the same time.

The game works perfectly, unfortunately there are few things that need to be improved and implemented, for example a timer, so that you can also compete agains yourself.

In order to download it you have to follow this XDA Forums topic, login to your account (if you don’t have you will need to create one), download the .CAB File and install it on your HTC Diamond.

Via: Msmobiles.com

Since I have offered you so many articles about the HTC Diamond in the past weeks: HTC Diamond tips, Couldn’t get any thinner, HTC Diamond official ROM, CoPilot for HTC Diamond today it’s time to present you (in our opinion) the top HTC Diamond accessories:

1. HTC Diamond extended Battery is for sure a must have for your HTC Touch Diamond. Upgrading your battery from 900 mAh to 1340 mAh will have a lot of positive consequences, the most important of them is that your HTC Diamond will be able to survive over one day without being recharged. The only negative aspect of the upgrade is that your device will become few mm thicker, you will have to make your choice between an ultra thin phone and a more powerful one.

The price for the extended battery (including the matching cover in the picture above) is £40.99.

2. HTC Diamond Alu-Leather Flip case- To protect the top of your HTC Diamond, Proporta has come with a great solution creating the Proporta HTC Diamond Alu-Leather Flip Case. The flip case is crafted by hand using over 5 years of expertise in making superior quality leather flip cases and pouches, to meet the exact dimensions of your HTC Touch Diamond (normal battery only!).

The case has an unique aluminum screen saver system to protect the large display of the HTC Diamond from getting damaged in case of accidental fall from heights up to 1 meter. The case can be mounted vertically on the dashboard of your car for use as turn-by-turn GPS navigator and makes it easily accessible while driving. The phone case can be attached to waist belt with optional belt attachment system. There are pockets to keep your credit cards alongside the cellular phone and to safeguard the phone from falling out of the case; there is a provision of magnetic clap, which ensures that the phone remains snuggly inside the case all time. The material the alu-leather case is made of is called genuine leather and looks perfectly stylish and sophisticated for use by professionals. The leather is reinforced with a thin lining of high-grade aluminum to strengthen it and protect it from getting crushed under accidental sit-on and falls. There is an elliptical cut in the casing for keeping a tab on calls and messages.
You can get yourself a HTC Diamond Alu-leather Flip Case for £19.99 from Expansys.

And the last but not the least important of our  HTC Diamond accessories top:

3. HTC Diamond Desktop Cardle CR G300 will help you solve all the connectivity problems you had to deal with until today. The desktop cradle allows charging as well as synchronizing the HTC Diamond by just putting the handset into the cradle and connecting the HTC Touch Diamond AC adaptor TCB100 and HTC Touch Diamond data cable DC U300, which are supplied with the handset. The stand comes with two inserts, one for the regular HTC Touch Diamond and other one for HTC Diamond powered by the extended battery. The best feature of the stand is that it allows simultaneous charging as well as synchrinizing with the PC, which is not possible with a single port equipped Touch Diamond.

The desktop cardle also has a 3.5mm line out cable, which can be used to play music or movie sounds over external speakers or even over a more complex music system. Other utilities as for example a TV out cable and a Multifunction Audio cable can be attached to the stand as well.

The Touch Diamond desktop cardle is built with superior quality plastics and is firm and holds the cell phone tightly in its place. The product is available in only in black and costs £29.99 at Expansys. The desktop cradle is highly recommended for people who do a lot of sync and want to keep a tab on their phone all the time they are working.

If you think there are any other HTC Diamond accessories we should also include into this top please leave a comment or a contact message and share it with us!