Not even a fortnight after HTC's Touch HD
went official in Germany, out pops a review from Deutschland calling it the best thing since sliced bread. Okay, so maybe our translation skills are a bit off, but one thing's for sure -- it was hailed as the first "iPhone killer to deserve that name." Right off the bat, reviewers praised the TouchFLO 3D interface for masking Windows Mobile, and of course, the expansive display was drooled upon numerous times. Additionally, critics praised the Opera browser while scolding Internet Explorer, and while it's hard to say for certain whether the battery life was remarkable, it definitely seemed to get their vote of approval. Of note, the 3.5-millimeter headphone jack was also loved, making us weep while thinking of what
could have been with the T-Mobile G1. At any rate, it seems pretty clear that the Touch HD is going to rock some socks off, but we're trying to push it out of our minds until it becomes available on
this side of the drink. Too bad that approach isn't working at all.
[Via
WMPowerUser]
Read - Early Touch HD review
Read - Video showing off Stocks tab
posted October 6th 2008 9:30AM
All hail the soon to be King of all Phones.
The iPhone shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence as this thing when doing comparisons.
The iPhone is all looks and very little function whereas this thing is both looks and limitless functions.
No contest at all.
I'll take two. I'm a heavy business user who also loves music and movies. This sucker looks like it can do it all. I've looked hard at the iPhone and the G1 but they lack one or more key features I've gotten used to on high end WinMo.
* iPhone lacks bluetooth stereo (A2DP), Office apps (Excel, Word), Copy/Paste, memory expandibility with MicroSD and MMS
* G1 lacks Exchange support, A2DP, network tethering, headphone jack which I use my car mostly. I'm confident many of these will be filled by the community and will look at them.
I have used the iPhone and agree that the experience blows away windows mobile, but can't we be greedy and have all the functionality and the experience? I don't care what OS it runs as long as it does what I want. Android on this guy could be killer once some of software add-ons come available.
TJ
Callin the iPhone is a real stretch being as is only now supports exchange and push, and not very well at that.
I meant to say calling the iPhone a Smart phone is a real stretch being as is only now supports exchange and push, and not very well at that.
Nothing can be termed as an "iphone killer" as long as the name iphone gets floated around.
It doesn't matter if the device in question is miles ahead in (take your pick) capability/capacity/usability/wow factor/..
It's all about the mindshare, and I can't remember the last day I did not see an iphone ad or heard/overheard it talked about.
iphone is an ipod (another iconic name) with a usably good web browser (and screen estate) and phone abilities. Underneath it may be a unix computer, but it can't even send a file over bluetooth without some good hacking (something any dime-a-dozen dumbphone can easily do). Taken just as a phone-talking device, it is easily bested by any dumbphone with a solid keypad.
Taken as a smartphone it can sort of sync with outlook through itunes, can do email, can do web but without downloads or uploads and whatnot, can't copy over a normal quicktime/mpeg/divx and see it too, etc etc..
It is actually what Palm TX should have been, had Palm not squandered away its followers and lead. Treo is nice, but hardly the legacy Palm IIIx or V left now, is it? (And I still think the dinosaur PalmOS has the best and snappiest human interface, though not the best looking).
Don't take me wrong, I like the iphone. I wanted to own one. It's big but not unmanageably so, nice screen estate, looks sturdy enough with the glass screen etc. Also a good looking interface that is also responsive enough and a doodle to use. When I realized it wouldn't fit my geek feet (not being able to copy over files, no filesystem or even file storage access, no good sync (notes and whatnot), very very poor editing files on the go, poor customization, etc, etc..)
Anyway, things and hype being what they are, it's very hard to destabilize iphone from its place. Those in the know are few are far between and do not (never did) constitute a sizeable demographic, sales-wise.
Touch HD may be a bit fiddlier with windows mobile running in the background, but it can multitask, has a bigger and better screen, can do real stuff that makes carrying around a laptop unnecessary. It can even show youtube, movies and play mp3's and browse the web at least as well as the iphone. You can even have one or more decent gps software on it, to go with the gps chip.
But all of this is irrelevant. Until some device can *grab headlines* saying "it is being talked about being distributed at country x with carriers y and z" it is bound to be a marginal runner up in the bigger picture.
Almost. The iPhone has mind share because it's a game changer. It changed the entire smart phone market. It's a paradox that tech-heads are usually the last ones to understand that, you'd think they'd be the first. The iPhone is a genius design and made many things easy and intuitive to use that were not before on a phone. It also left out those things that they just couldn't make easy and intuitive to use. A lot of those things can now be done via App Store apps, for example file browsing and dropping files on your phone. Costs you $5 or so extra.
Minor correction too: The touch HD can play YouTube just as the iPhone can, in H264 encoded format. It can't show YouTube videos in Flash as there is no Flash built in.
If you are a geek and fiddler, unlocking the iPhone and installing a command line shell as well as being able to ssh into your phone should satisfy those needs pretty well ;)
iphone is -sadly- a crippled toy. This is the real deal. To think that I thought MS was the evil empire, until I met his Jobsesness..
Though we should be thankful to Apple for its UI work. It attracted attention to what was lacking, after PalmOS went, well, whereever it went..
p.s.:
- if you really need an iapple fix get an ipod nano, and get it out of your system. itunes would have been tolerable if it were ten times as fast with a tenth of the overhead (-and I'm running a nice and nippy quad-core system with 8 gigs of memory). I shudder to think using it for important stuff, like my phone sync..
anyone else dont like the silver around the camera?
I speak German, so here's what I took away from the review + YouTube Video:
The touch HD looks fantastic, this is quite possibly the first WinMo phone that can seriously compete with the iPhone. As to why, AreaMobile is pretty clear: Because it has Mobile Opera and because HTCs TouchFlo 3D interface hides WinMo to the point where you never actually have to use WinMobile. The selectable auto-focus seems like a no-brainer for the iPhone too, like why doesn't it have that. And the giant screen is awesome.
I am a little put off by HTCs use of 3D everywhere- it's really lame:
- It's always the same Flip3D-like bird-eye view. It doesn't look good on Flip3D, and it doesn't look good on the touch HD
- It takes away rather than adding. The stock chart would be better in 2D. Why is it 3D, or a tilted 2D page, to be more accurate? There is no reason except to show off the 3D hardware. Same goes for the album art. 3D just to look pretty, which kind of backfires because it doesn't even do that.
Still - if the difference between an iPhone and a WinMo device comes down to subtle taste questions, it's a HUGE advancement for WinMobile. HTC achieved this by hiding Windows Mobile and removing Internet Explorer but to the end user, that doesn't matter - what matters is the result only.
AreaMobile didn't say that they actually tested the battery life. They just took the manufacturer's numbers, and those look good. But given the huge screen size, and the potential for lots of background activity, I will believe that when I see actual real life test results.
in the review it says vollgemüllt but it means full
if the desktop is full with program icons, you have to push them back
The Areamobile video now has English subtitles. To switch them on, please click the red button down right in the Youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHLOYDgwhkE
I think when people say "iphone killer" they're not really referring to the hardware. Many times they refer to the popularity of the phone. a very big reason for this is because of apple. almost all of it's releases were an instant success, and when they released the iphone it was an instant hit. when you look at hardware, operating system, etc. the iphone is not the best out there. living in the u.s., i still think the iphone is one of the best "touchscreen" phones available. personally, i prefer to stick to my blackberry. although it is not touch or anything, it beats the iphone in the things that matter. now regarding the HTC Touch's OS, since it's release may be closely lined to Windows Mobile 7, which was specifically designed for touch and motion, here is the link http://microsoft.blognewschannel.com/archives/2008/01/06/exclusive-windows-mobile-7-to-focus-on-touch-and-motion-gestures/ and although the previous versions of windows mobile proved to be somewhat faltering, i believe this one will be amazing. as when they release it here in the u.s. i have no idea. since none of the public companies here even support video conference of that many megapixels, it might be a problem.
maybe i was wrong. it doesn't look like when the touch HD is released in europe early november it will come equiped with win mobile 7. if it is ever released in the U.S. i hope that it comes with it. or if it isn't and i have to get it unlocked, which i probably will, maybe just maybe they might make the OS upgrade cheap.