Rob Enderle raves about the HTC Advantage, an iPhone alternative
Rob provides a great writeup after two weeks with the HTC Advantage and considers it a true alternative to the Apple iPhone. No, it’s not as sexy as the Cupertino offering and you effectively need to use a Bluetooth headset with all of your calls (unless you like a speakerphone setup), but it shines in ways that the iPhone doesn’t. What ways, you ask? Rob likes the native Exchange syncing, integrated 3G radio, miniSD slot and built-in GPS, making it closer to a laptop replacement. Neither device can be all things to all people, but this is a fair comparison and worth the read if our video overview hasn’t helped you decide if the HTC Advantage is for you or not.
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So many positive reviews of this device. Too bad the internet on pocket pcs is not as good as internet on the nokia 800. If they could match the nokia 800 this could be a killer device.
Well…I just took the plunge and ordered one of these lil’ puppies…should have it Monday…
;-)
I picked one up last night from a CompUSA 2 hours away…it was worth the drive and the money. I can do everything I used to do on my laptop in a day-to-day setting. The hi-res screen and Opera make web browsing pure joy. I find myself going for full sites over mobile now. I am so glad I sat out the first round of iPhones and picked the Advantage up instead.
The web experience isn’t as good as on an N800, but it’s not far from with Opera – or why not try Minimo for the PPC? The extra 200 pixels of width that the N800 has do make all the difference though.
If the HTC Omni really comes out with 800×480 it will kick Nokia butt all up and down the block though. Here’s hoping.
As mentioned in the first comment here – too bad that the internet experience isn’t up to scratch. The N800 is certainly not a productive experience and if this is worse (the 7500 certainly is) then it should be highlighted. Everyone seems to be skipping this, rather major, issue in my opinion.
Steve.
With the exception of Java and Flash, the web experience on the Advantage is very solid. I don’t understand the statement that the web experience is not good on the Adventure. It’s riot accurate. Especially with Opera.
640 pixels wide is no good for full-size web pages. With 800 you usually can view a “desktop” webpage just fine, though.
Surfing on an N800 is a lot better than on a VGA Pocket PC – which is not to say that surfing on a VGA Pocket PC will beat virtually every other pocketable device with just QVGA or something horrible like that. ;)
Opera Mobile lets the user control how the page displays, full desktop style, fit to screen, and one column. There is always one that works with virtually every web page and works well. Switching on the fly is near instantaneous.
I usually view webpages in one column mode on my Pocket PC and Windows Mobile devices. 640×480 is fine for that, Heck even 320×240 works well in that mode. I’m attracted to the Advantage mostly because of the overall screen size.