HTC Shift gets hands on

If you can bear to watch the walkthrough video, GottaBeMobile has a hands-on with the HTC Shift, the first UMPC from the traditionally cellphone only company. It appears as if HTC has a winner on its hands with the Shift, as the reviewer seems completely smitten with the device: HTC has definitely nailed the "feel" of the device in terms of balance and finish. The Pocket PC mode seems to be pretty great too: the extra battery life is welcome, and as the reviewer demonstrates, it's very easy to switch between the two modes. "I'm in Vista Business, I'm back in Pocket PC. I'm back in Vista, I'm back in ... " Check it out at 30:35 in the video after the break.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 23rd 2007 3:47AM]

Ok everyone/Hugo,

not a bad video of the HTC Shift, shame about the baby crying in the backgound, yours?

There are a couple of questions/queries though

I would have liked to hear more about the Skype ability of the HTC Shift, it would have been good to see it in action. As you say there is no voice capability but using a bluetooth thingy it shouldn't have been too hard...

You didn't say anything about options, like size of Hard disk - in your presentation you said 60GB, I thought it was only going to be 30GB...is there an SSD option? Which would really speed up and sort out Vista restart...it did take rather a long time in the video. And it would give Vista a much needed boost in battery life...3 hours not bad but 5 would have been better.

Is it possible to expand memory to 2GB? hich for some applications will be necessary.

I would have liked to have seen you try out office 2007 applications on the HTC Shift. After all this is what most people will be using it for...how does it perform?

You didn't say much about the co-operative working of the Windows Mobile part and the Vista part...for example Documents/Images/Media etc. Do they share the same paths automatically or does this have to be set up by yourself.

So many questions and so little answers...

Hugo good job on getting your hands on one and answering the "looks good" question, but you've left us (well me anyway) wanting more..

By the way - I saw your video courtsy of MicrosoftsTechNet email I received today...

Thanks and I look forward to your answers to my queries above.

Regards