HTC Universal
Discontinued 11th May 2005
The HTC Universal first came to our
attention back in February with the announcement of
the T-Mobile
MDA IV. Finally, HTC have given some more information
about this handset, which they are calling the "Universal".
It sounds like a bit of a pompous name,
but in fact the HTC Universal does pretty much everything
you can imagine. The headline features are obvious -
there's a large 640x480 pixel display that can be used
in landscape mode with the QWERTY keyboard, or it can
be rotated around and used like a "traditional"
touch sensitive PDA device.
Crucially, this is a 3G phone with WiFi
on top of GSM and GPRS, meaning that the HTC Universal
is very flexible indeed in connectivity terms. Of course,
it has Bluetooth and cable connections to a PC too.
The operating system, and indeed the
Universal's only real weak point, is Windows Mobile
5.0. Yes, you can expect it to have all the latest bells
and whistles when the OS comes out.. but Microsoft have
recently renamed it to Windows Mobile 5.0 from Windows
Mobile 2005 which is perhaps an indicator that the OS
won't be ready until sometime in 2006. And of course,
Microsoft's incredibly inconsistent naming conventions
are lamentable. A close look at the Universal's screen
(below
left) shows that this certainly isn't the way it's
meant to look, with poorly rendered fonts showing that
this is either photoshopped or a very early pre-production
OS.
When it does come out, you can expect
Windows Mobile 5.0 to have "Pocket" versions
of Word, Outlook, Excel and Internet Explorer plus a
PowerPoint and PDF viewer. The HTC Universal's display
lends itself well to working with office documents,
emailing or browsing the web, and of course the QWERTY
keyboard is a great help here.
HTC haven't specified, but the Universal
is bound to come with Bluetooth and expandable memory.
Recent HTC products have had cameras in the 1 megapixel
range or above, so we guess that the primary camera
on the Universal will be 1.3 megapixels, or perhaps
2 megapixels. Size and weight are unspecified too, but
we understand that the Universal is around the same
size as the other large-format PDA style phones from
HTC, perhaps a little thicker though.
Right at the moment there is no competition
for the HTC Universal. Nokia's 9500, 9300 and 7710 handsets
are good but lack 3G, and no other manufacturer has
such a large screen device. However, despite HTC claiming
that the Universal will ship sometime in the second
half of 2005, they are reliant on Microsoft coming up
with the goods as far as the operating system is concerned.
That's a long, long time for the likes of Nokia to come
up with a 3G version of the 7710 or 9500 device, and
given that Nokia are running at about three or four
product launches per month then it's certainly possible
that we might see a similar Symbian powered device hitting
the streets before the HTC Universal.
We have already seen that T-Mobile are
going to rebadge the HTC Universal, followed by Vodafone
and Orange, plus we expect other major carriers and
independents such as Carrier Devices / i-Mate. But with
handsets as capable as this, we do wonder if HTC aren't
missing out on a trick of selling them under their own
brand name.
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HTC
Universal Provisional Specifications
|
Available:
|
Very
late 2005
|
Network:
|
GSM
900/1800/900 / UMTS (3G)
/ WiFi
|
Data:
|
GPRS
+ UMTS (3G) + WiFi
|
Screen:
|
640x480
pixels Colour depth not
specified
|
Camera:
|
Twin
cameras Resolution not
specified
|
Size:
|
Not
specified
|
Bluetooth:
|
Yes
|
Infra-red:
|
Not
specified
|
Polyphonic:
|
Yes
|
Java:
|
Limited
|
Battery
life:
|
Not
specified
|
OS:
|
Windows
Mobile 5.0
|
|
|