HTC Smart is, ironically, company's first dumbphone
By Chris Ziegler 
posted January 7th 2010 11:32AM
posted January 7th 2010 11:32AM
posted January 7th 2010 11:32AM
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Sounds smart enough, its more than my HTC s620...
@Oli D there's no wi-fi in this!!!
@Oli D there's no wi-fi in this!!!
@unwynd If you need WiFi, then this isn't the phone for you. Think low cost!
@Oli D
I see your avatar has already changed to the Brew Mobile platform logo.
@TC It's a bit crazy no wifi and lo! the price will be what? costy too.. wheuu.
Running on BREW, it's actually been painted with HTC's Sense interface which as you know, was last seen on the HD2. Processor speed is just 300MHz—pretty slow— HTC smart details: http://bit.ly/htc-smart-details
Heh. HTC Dumb.
@bluemajik no, HTC Quietly Brilliant
@bluemajik
The market for dumb phones is much larger then smart phones. This is a smart play by HTC. Bringing all the shimmer and shine of a smart phone UI to a dumb phone, I think it will play out well for them.
Obviously not many engadget readers will be picking up this type of of phone, but we are not the be all, end all of the cell phone market.
@ljm Yup - a gamechanger.
When featurephones are smartphones, where is the market for smartphones?
@Freakin Ijit
It could be...maybe a gateway for dumb phone users into the smartphone world?
..but I hate that game changer term....plus you never know if it is until, well, the game has changed.
@ljm I agree that this could be a gateway for non smartphone users. By using the Sense UI styling, when someone with an HTC Smart decides to ACTUALLY go smart, they'll probably be looking at something with a familiar look, and HTC will have them covered with either Android or WM.
@Freakin Ijit
SUPERphones! lol
@Freakin Ijit Same place where it always has been.
The BREW OS is cheap to implement, and the specs are cheap too (you didn't mention the 300MHZ processor), so at the very least this dumbphone should be fairly inexpensive. Too bad its only launching in Europe and Asia.
Isn't this wonderful... AT&T is going with BREW software at the same time that Verizon is moving away from it fast. Hopefully that also means that Verizon is also moving quickly at getting a CDMA version of the iPhone (with world GSM and 3g bands in 1700 and 2100 that could mean T-Mobile support) as well.
Also, please spare me the comments about CDMA being a dead end technology. It will be around for quite sometime with Verizon as we're at least two years away from LTE networks being widespread.
@ipaladin
Basically about CDMA, just because its not as widespead as GSM doesn't make it dead end. Do your research, in ways its better.
@Caprice0083 Agreed, in terms of technology CDMA is more advanced. The only issues is the lack of SIM cards, but there is a similar card in the specs, it's just that no one uses it.
@ipaladin
You all know that UMTS uses CDMA right? One isn't "more advanced" than the other anymore (though I also miss having a SIM).
BREW blows. I can't believe AT&T is forcing anymore to use that crap. I wish the regional carriers would get their sh*t together and get enough collective buying power to give manufacturers an alternative than to bow to these ridiculous pressures.
@ipaladin You're confusing BREW phones with CDMA. BREW is an Operating System and will quite happily run on GSM - as well as CDMA.
Plenty of phones released in the last couple of years have run BREW. In fact, there is a specific set of Qualcomm chips which are designed for GSM (such as the MSM6280, MSM7200 and MSM6245).
@junktrunk Yes, Qualcomm contributed a lot to UMTS, in fact the air interface is another version of CDMA. The core is more or less similar to GSM, however. If anything I'm on the same page as caprice. I just don't think he understood I was saying that CDMA was anything but dead end.
SIM technology does exist for CDMA2000, in fact I think the Snapdragon may have the capability to enable SIM cards, which would be great for a Verizon version of the Nexus One to have.
@Silver I know BREW is independent of CDMA or GSM, but that doesn't change why I think AT&T is stupid for doing this.
Why not Android? It's free.
@TareG Performance overhead maybe?
@Rebajas
Android requires a minimum of 200 mhz processing power...
@TareG
Sometimes, the minimum isn't the best...
You don't run Windows XP with a 200MHz processor and 64MB of RAM, do you? Of course, you don't. Unless you still have an old Pentium Pro laying around, there's no reason why you would.
@TareG : Just because it's free, doesn't make it necessarily the best choice.
I don't think "smartphones" have advanced enough to be able to call this a "dumbphone" (I greatly dislike that term, their probably smarter than many people). A "dumbphone" *cringe* to me is one of the many lower end Nokias or something similar, that can send and recieve calls and texts, might have a camera (about 1 megapixel) and nowadays has stereo sound and a colour screen.
One day, probably soon, "smartphones" will have advanced enough to call this HTC a "dumbphone" *cringes*, but the current "smartphones" will probably be going in the same direction by then.
@Tams
I thought dumbphone was interchangeable with featurephone? Why not use that term instead?
What IS a dumbphone?
A mobile device with decent enough UI, but lacking multitasking, flash support, decent camera and more...?
That sounds familiar... ;)
@stewie325 Dumbphone is a generic term for all phones that don't have a high level OS like Android, WebOS, iPhone, Winmo, BB... A phone could have pretty high level specs and still be considered a "dumbphone" based on the OS
@stewie325 You totally made my day. Thank you.
@sd11
You TOTALLY missed the joke, didn't you?
@stewie325
Trolling is popular as long as it is anti-apple.
@mikeweezer
Yeah, we call that a joke.
You want trolling, check out several posters in the HP Tablet article. That's trolling.
@stewie325 The iPhone didn't have Apps, copy and paste, or 3G for a year. Throw in the fact that it doesn't have a user-accessible filesystem, It is barely a smartphone and much more of a media powerhouse.
Looks similar a Nexus One minus the trackball...
aka Dumb and Dumber
@MVMNT
It's a friggen Touch2 (Mega) without a home and windows button (and the zoombar is gone too):
http://shop.www.hi.nl/image/00041/m5article/HTC_Touch2_silver_sfeer_530x530px.png
@TT So it does, says it all, not seen one of them in the UK mind...
Big up my first downrank haha
Yeah, looks smart enough to me... When I think of dumb phones I certainly DON'T think of a touch screen with 3G - no matter how fast or slow the processor is. It's just a least smart, smart phone.
I'm waiting to see how many under-trained phone store employees will try to sell this to customers as a "smartphone".
Brew? Why? and would that even sell over here in the states and if AT&T picks it up won't it just be another BS phone to their crappy line up as is? HTC must be hungry for dollars for them to make a dumb phone
@Caprice0083
It's already used in the US (almost exclusively). http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?C=0&ID=387109
If AT&T "standardizes" on it, that means they're ditching Java as the method to deploy their own apps. I don't know how big the existing BREW developer community is but I'm pretty sure it's not anything to compete with midlet developers. Maybe their intention is to just block your ability to download anything useful to replace the crappy apps they preload and ask you to pay $10/month to use.
@junktrunk Honestly, I don't get why AT&T wouldn't push a scaled down version of Android for basic phones over BREW. Android already has a larger dev community.
Americas first KIRF
Looks like those high volume sales of Samsung Star and LG Cookie has attracted HTC.
i supposed this is THE phone for BLONDES.
@va jj
youre probably right. lol, i can see them right now:
"LULZ, i got the HTC SMART cuz its SMART!!! why did you get the HTC Bravo?? isnt that for like... actresses and movie people?
@va jj
Should put Jillian Russell as the phone's brand ambassador.
@Caprice0083 I was saying that CDMA is not a dead end tech and that it's not going away for a while. I think you misunderstood what I said.
Also, a lot of the voice codecs in CDMA will be used in LTE, specifically EVRC.