HTC Advantage X7510 Preview
Discontinued 11th February 2008
We first saw the original HTC Advantage
(aka Athena) last year, badged as the T-Mobile
Ameo. The Advantage met with limited success in
the marketplace, presumably because it sits in an awkward
market niche - much bigger than a mobile phone, but
not as well specified as a notebook PC, the Advantage
didn't quite make the breakthrough that it might have
done. So, HTC have reworked and upgraded the Advantage
and have come out with a new model, the Advantage
X7510.
Given the launch date for the X7510
is March, we are pretty sure that this will ship with Windows
Mobile 6 plus the TouchFLO interface used on the
HTC
Touch. However, HTC's press release refers
to a "future version of Windows Mobile",
which we guess means Windows Mobile 7. Think
of this as Windows Mobile for the iPhone
generation, with a hugely improved interface and superior
user experience, and you might see what Microsoft are
rumoured to be working on. We suspect that the X7510
may therefore come with Windows Mobile 6 at launch with
an upgrade path available later.
This
is a large device - the HTC Advantage X7510 measures
133 x 98 x 21mm and weighs 375 grams with the keyboard.
Taking the keyboard off removes 85 grams of weight and
5mm thickness. Most of the size of the new Advantage
is taken up by the 5" 640 x 480 pixel display,
plus of course the large QWERTY keyboard.
The display is touch-sensitive, but
we are surprised to see that it is only a VGA resolution
panel when even smaller devices can manage a higher
pixel count. We think that 800 pixels is the minimum
you need for web access, and 640 pixels might cause
a few problems. Internal storage is a whopping 16GB
of Flash memory (the old Advantage had an 8GB hard disk),
and this can be expanded using microSD cards. On the
back is a 3.1 megapixel camera with autofocus - although
this is nice to have, a 13 ounce device like the
Advantage X7510 does not easily lend itself to digital
photography.
The
keyboard is worth looking at in some more depth. The
chicklet keyboard in the original advantage has been
replaced with a flat, touch-sensitive keyboard with
haptic feedback to simulate the feel of a mechanical
keypress. Quite how good that will be to use remains
to be seen. It certainly looks sleek. Remember that
the screen slides to cover the keyboard completely,
allowing the Advantage to be used as a compact tablet
PC.
The HTC Advantage X7510 is a 3.5G device,
supporting UMTS (3G) and HSDPA high-speed data. It comes
with tri-band WCDMA 850 / 1900 / 2100 MHz , in
addition to quad-band GSM with GPRS and EDGE data, plus
802.11b and g WiFi. If this doesn't mean much to you,
don't worry - it simply means that the X7510 will work
pretty much worldwide. In addition, the X7510 supports
GPS. Inside is a 624 MHz Marvell PXA 270 processor with
128 MB RAM.
At the heart of the Advantage X7510
is its software package. Running on Windows Mobile 6..
or Windows Mobile 7, it supports the TouchFLO interface,
comes with pocket versions of Microsoft Office applications,
TomTom Navigator 6 software and the Opera Web browser.
Windows Mobile is a pretty familiar operating system
to most of our readers, so we'll assume that you have
at least a passing familiarity with it.
On top of all this, the HTC Advantage
X7510 comes with TV output, a USB connector, Bluetooth
and a 3.5mm jack plug for audio output. The 2100 mAH
battery can drive the Advantage for up to 5 hours of
talktime on 3G, with up to 12 days standby time. In
real world use, you can expect the battery to drain
more quickly if using WiFi, Bluetooth or any processor
intensive applications.
No pricing information is available,
but we would expect the HTC Advantage to retail at around
£600 / $1200 / €900 or so at launch. HTC say that
it should be available from next month.
|
HTC
Advantage X7510 at a glance
|
Available:
|
Q1
2008
|
Network:
|
GSM
850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
UMTS 850 / 1900 / 2100
|
Data:
|
GPRS
+ EDGE + UMTS + HSPDA +
WiFi
|
Screen:
|
640
x 480 pixels
|
Camera:
|
3.1
megapixels
|
Size:
|
Compact
subnotebook 134 x 98
x 21mm / 375 grams
|
Bluetooth:
|
Yes
|
Memory
card:
|
microSD
|
Infra-red:
|
No
|
Polyphonic:
|
Yes
|
Java:
|
Limited
|
GPS:
|
Yes
|
Battery
life:
|
5 hours talk / 12 days standby
|
|
|