Goodbye HTC Athena, hello HTC Advantage

While Athena was far from the worst product name we've come across, HTC seems to think they can do one better, using the 3GSM conference to officially rebrand the desirable device as the HTC Advantage. Apart the spiffy new moniker, however, the Windows Mobile-based device remains otherwise unchanged, with that same 5-inch VGA display, Intel PXA270 624 MHz processor, 8GB hard drive, 3 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, WiFi, and GPS, not to mention tri-band HSDPA and quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE connectivity. Of course, this isn't the first identity crisis that the device has suffered, with it already once undergoing a name change at T-Mobile's behest, who found the friendly-sounding Ameo more to their liking. In case you haven't seen enough of the device yet, you can check out another pic it sans keyboard after the break, and click through to HTC's newly-launched Advantage website for product shots aplenty, including a hypnotizing 360° view.

[Via Laptoping]

[Fred @ Feb 13th 2007 12:45PM]

Haha, makes me reminisce about my NES Advantage. Gotta love those turbo buttons...

[Andy Weir @ Feb 13th 2007 2:22PM]

I'm impressed by how poorly this article has been researched, especially given how short it is.

The article leads us to believe that the "Athena" moniker has been poorly received and that there have been calls to dump this 'brand' in favour of others. The reality however has nothing whatsoever to do with this. "Athena" was the product's codename, used internally within HTC during development of the product, and additionally applying to the completed reference design. As with all HTC handsets, networks and resellers can then apply their own brand names to the reference designs. HTC themselves sell their own handsets under the HTC brand, but always apply an actual model name that is unrelated to the name of the reference design.

The HTC Athena reference design has therefore been given the model name "Advantage" for sale under the HTC brand; T-Mobile has called it "Ameo" for sale under their own brand. Neither T-Mobile nor HTC would have ever had any intention of selling the handset as "Athena".

Other examples include the HTC "Hermes" reference design being branded as the T-Mobile MDA Vario II and Orange SPV M3100; and the HTC "Star Trek"/"STRTRK" reference design being branded as the Qtek 8500 and Cingular 3125.

The reference design name has nothing at all to do with the different names applied by networks and other brands, and to suggest that this handset has suffered some kind of "identity crisis" due to the original Athena name supposedly being a poor choice is utter nonsense.

[Eric Glassman @ Feb 13th 2007 3:11PM]

What, no Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional!? This is the most public yet of my many humiliations. Outrageous.

[Joel Stephen @ Feb 13th 2007 3:51PM]

Would of been cool if it was widescreen since it seems to big to us with one hand anyway...would it have been better to use flash memory rather than a drive since its only 8 gigs....and not sure if the keyboard style was a good choice slide out seems more pratical but its size might of made that impratical...the guts are great though and I dont mind bulk as long as it serves a purpose

[Kads Baker @ Feb 14th 2007 12:16AM]

Yay for THC!!!!

Oh wait...

[pstelman @ Feb 14th 2007 8:16AM]

That's exactly what I want! (Well, today anyway.)

[axzr @ Feb 16th 2007 9:24AM]

Yeah, I wonder why there is a HDD rather than solid state memory.