http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/ Engadget Comments for HTC Snap reviewed: QWERTY keyboard, Winmo 6.1, no great shakes http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/May 1st 2009 2:21PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/May 1st 2009 2:28PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/May 1st 2009 3:48PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/May 2nd 2009 12:27PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/May 1st 2009 2:27PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/May 1st 2009 2:32PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/May 1st 2009 2:33PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/May 1st 2009 2:37PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/
BT - Sound quality sucks unless you headset is within 1' of the phone with no obstacles between them
Battery life - sucks

How did I divine this?

I've had the HTC 6600, 6700, 6800, 6900, Diamond and I support clients with many phones. All HTC phones seem to have this weakness yet free phones have better BT. Other WM phones have better battery life.

Turns out it is a design flaw time and time again with HTC. I really hope Sprint or Verizon will carry the Toshiba TG01 - no more HTC, no more HTC!]]>May 1st 2009 2:36PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/
As far as battery-power goes, my 6800 lasted days without charging, even while connecting to WiFi, Evdo and Bluetooth connections and frequently using touch and keyboard commans. Out of the box, the battery life is -awful-, but, as with the bluetooth issues, it takes a little research, and with a few tweaks, the battery lasts just as long (or longer) than other handsets.

Most of these phones just aren't meant for the common user. But the customization and power behind these little guys make them more than worth it to a power-user.]]>May 1st 2009 3:01PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/commands*

Meanwhile, I can't type. And that last sentence above (about power users) is almost certainly -not- about this device.]]>May 1st 2009 3:04PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/May 1st 2009 7:06PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/May 1st 2009 2:39PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/May 1st 2009 6:22PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/May 1st 2009 2:36PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/




deet it up, bitches.]]>May 1st 2009 2:37PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/]]>May 1st 2009 4:58PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/
/me looks at keyboard layout vs. PC keyboard layout

nope, the 'a' key does not belong to the left of the 'q' key, someone here just isn't used to a keyboard

if you look at the G1, there may not be a tab key, but the 'a' key is in the same relative location as it is on the snap, just because you're not used to there being a button there on a smartphone, doesn't mean the 'a' key is out of place.]]>May 1st 2009 2:50PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/May 1st 2009 2:55PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/
I like this layout. ]]>May 1st 2009 3:16PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/May 1st 2009 3:33PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/May 1st 2009 3:18PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/May 1st 2009 3:46PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/
This particular device is the followup to the Dash, and pics of this guy leaked like 4 months ago.]]>May 1st 2009 5:01PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/May 1st 2009 5:03PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/
I think the habit of associating the concept of "business focused" with candybar-shaped, QWERTY smartphones with small displays, traditional trackball or stylus based interfaces (i.e. no sensitive touch input), and generally mediocre processors and no hardware graphics acceleration of the interface drastically needs to be re-evaluated.

I would argue that despite their association with media playback, gaming, and other consumer activities, devices with large displays, touchscreen interfaces, fast processors with graphics acceleration, and multi-gigabytes of storage (like the iPhone, Google G1, Palm Pre) are well suited to the demands of business. (and depending on your preference some would argue a hardware keyboard is necessary like the G1 or Pre).

One of the major misconceptions is the idea that hardware graphics acceleration is only useful for games or a flashy user interface that is just "eye-candy" and doesn't provide any utility. This is completely false. As seen on devices like the iPhone/G1/Palm Pre, native graphics acceleration is directly responsible for the smooth and lightening quick panning and zooming of not only webpages, but office documents, PDF files, large images, etc. Without it, the CPU is forced to do all the work leading to slow, jerky movement and a very frustrating user experience.

Moving on, having access to outlook contacts, calendar, and push email is great, and seems to be the most popular use of smartphones, and righly so. However, they should be far more capable than just providing basic PIM info. Until the advent of newer full-screen smartphones with modern web browser engines, using the internet was mostly limited to WAP or simple HTML sites built specifically for mobile phones. Users would look at news headlines, or check sports scores, stock prices, etc. smartphones were not being used beyond that because it was far too frustrating of an experience. Unfortunately, this still remains true for many users on "business devices" like the Blackberry 8830 I own that is current the standard for Verizon wireless business clients. Although installing Opera Mini certainly helped, and it will do in a pinch to lookup movie times or read news articles, It is still incredibly frustrating to load large websites that were not designed for mobile browsers, and AJAX web applications are unusable.

To my point: basic needs of users of so-called "business focused" smartphone are not being met because of the long stagnation of the most popular devices' capabilities. Besides having the aspect of familiarity -- and in the case of Blackberry having advanced PUSH data support -- user experiences on these devices are far inferior to that of the new consumer-focused platforms. Now I should make the point that the Palm Pre seems to be the first phone to actually bridge the gap, though it is being advertised as a device as much for the iPhone demographic as it is for corporate users. For the point of this commentary, I am going to group it in with the iPhone and G1 and not all the Blackberry models, Palm Treos/Centros, and the mulitiude of business-focused devices running windows mobile from the Asian companies.

Here are two seemingly basic capabilites where the new smartphones vastly outpace the standard PalmOS, Windows mobile or Blackberry OS "business phones".

1) "full" web browsing capabilities -- namely the ability to access complex websites made for a desktop browser and perhaps use of certain web applications (CRM, sales, analytics, etc), any of which could relying on AJAX and javascript for functionality.

what is necessary for a good experience:
- A large (3"+) high-resolution (HVGA+) display to facilitate viewing
- A graphics accelerated interface in order to be capable of smoothly and quickly panning and zooming a webpage.
- Most importantly, advanced web browser software that is able to render complex webpages correctly, including full javascript and AJAX support. If the web browser can't access a vital business-related web application, then it's worthless.

I have worked on many different smartphones through the years, including ones from the two dominant corporate suppliers, Palm and RIM. This includes the Treo 650s, Treo 700s, and most recently I have a Blackberry Curve 8330. All of these phones have pathetic web browsers as standard, and even adding aftermarket browsers (like Opera Mini) to my 8820, the experience comes nowhere close to that of the "consumer phones" I listed above. Browsing for basic information like news, etc on mobile-optimized websites is fine, but forget about using AJAX web applications or any complex site built for a desktop web browser. Even if my blackberry had a fast processor and a modern webkit based browser, It would still be difficult because the screen is to small and resolution too low -- especially as panning and zooming is so slow because there is no hardware graphics acceleration.

2) Viewing of different types of office documents, scans, graphs, PDFs, etc.
what is necessary for a good experience:
- Software that natively supports the display (and possibly editng, though less imporant) of different formats, most prominently Word, Excel, and PDF.
- A large (3"+) high-resolution (HVGA+) display to actually be able to see as much of the document as possible, as clearly as possible.
- Most important, a fast CPU and graphics accelerated interface to enable the ability to pan around and zoom into the document quickly and smoothly to digest the relevant information. This is particularly true when engaged in a discussion about the document with another party and you need to be able to view differnt sections of the document quickly.]]>May 2nd 2009 12:26AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/May 2nd 2009 4:50AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/htc-snap-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-winmo-6-1-no-great-shakes/
Try it, I reckon you'll like it.

]]>May 30th 2009 6:39PM