I've owned my Fuze for about a month. It's my second WinMo smartphone (I previously owned a Samsung Blackjack II), and I do WinMo software development in my spare time.
Out of the box, the phone has many features that put iPhones and Blackberries to shame.
Pros:
+ VGA touchscreen (twice the resolution of iPhone's display, and 4 times the resolution of QVGA)
+ QWERTY keyboard has lots of keys that are small, yet easily accessible with my large hands.
+ Accelerometers- might seem gimmicky at first (Teeter is a fun game), the ability to mute a phone call by turning it face-down is surprisingly useful
+ Opera as default web browser. It blows Pocket IE away in terms of speed and usability.
+ Community support- even though HTC doesn't seem to care about customer's support ("We don't care if 3rd party software can't run on your device..."), the folks at xda-developers.com are great about tweaking HTC phones to near-perfection.
+ Wireless connection options are great. Supports AT&T's 3G/HSDPA network. Connection to a Wifi network is surprisingly fast for this little device (I wish my laptop could do this).
+ Supports HSUPA (needs to be unlocked), which increases upload speeds ten-fold (for me at least), which allows much snappier web-browsing
+ MicroSDHC expansion slot, allowing up to 32 GB of extra memory
+ TouchFlo3D front end
+ WinMo has more available apps than most (all?) other smartphone platforms, and is very easy to develop new apps for WM
+ Extra little surprises like the light sensor, very bright LED flash, snazzy notification LED (looks very cool), TV-out functionality (requires $20 cable), and a capacitive touchpad below the screen.
Cons:
- Small screen
- Crappy settings out of the box... Touchflow is jerky on default AT&T rom, GPS lag, hardware Direct3D support (easily fixable with a custom rom from xda-developers)
- AT&T bloatware, trial software wasting precious rom space (again, easily fixable with new rom)
- Glossy black finish = fingerprint magnet and very slippery device. The HTC Touch Pro overseas had a rubber matte back that was much nicer and felt more solid in your hands. No idea why they changed this for the US version.
- Lack of proper hardware drivers for video and 3D acceleration.*
*This is unacceptable. Even after HTC made assurances after the Kaiser driver debacle that future "devices" would be better supported. This thing has awesome hardware that is being advertised as one of the fastest mobile chipsets out on the market (Qualcomm MSM7201a, which has impressive specs on paper), but it runs video and games slower than my Dell Axim PocketPC produced back in 2003.
Overall, this is a great phone that with an impressive number of features. If you can excuse the mediocre video playback and lack of OpenGL ES support, this is an ideal phone. But if you're looking for a robust multimedia device that can handle 640x480 videos as well as 3D games, I'd suggest avoiding HTC phones until they fix their drivers.
Out of the box, the phone has many features that put iPhones and Blackberries to shame.
Pros:
+ VGA touchscreen (twice the resolution of iPhone's display, and 4 times the resolution of QVGA)
+ QWERTY keyboard has lots of keys that are small, yet easily accessible with my large hands.
+ Accelerometers- might seem gimmicky at first (Teeter is a fun game), the ability to mute a phone call by turning it face-down is surprisingly useful
+ Opera as default web browser. It blows Pocket IE away in terms of speed and usability.
+ Community support- even though HTC doesn't seem to care about customer's support ("We don't care if 3rd party software can't run on your device..."), the folks at xda-developers.com are great about tweaking HTC phones to near-perfection.
+ Wireless connection options are great. Supports AT&T's 3G/HSDPA network. Connection to a Wifi network is surprisingly fast for this little device (I wish my laptop could do this).
+ Supports HSUPA (needs to be unlocked), which increases upload speeds ten-fold (for me at least), which allows much snappier web-browsing
+ MicroSDHC expansion slot, allowing up to 32 GB of extra memory
+ TouchFlo3D front end
+ WinMo has more available apps than most (all?) other smartphone platforms, and is very easy to develop new apps for WM
+ Extra little surprises like the light sensor, very bright LED flash, snazzy notification LED (looks very cool), TV-out functionality (requires $20 cable), and a capacitive touchpad below the screen.
Cons:
- Small screen
- Crappy settings out of the box... Touchflow is jerky on default AT&T rom, GPS lag, hardware Direct3D support (easily fixable with a custom rom from xda-developers)
- AT&T bloatware, trial software wasting precious rom space (again, easily fixable with new rom)
- Glossy black finish = fingerprint magnet and very slippery device. The HTC Touch Pro overseas had a rubber matte back that was much nicer and felt more solid in your hands. No idea why they changed this for the US version.
- Lack of proper hardware drivers for video and 3D acceleration.*
*This is unacceptable. Even after HTC made assurances after the Kaiser driver debacle that future "devices" would be better supported. This thing has awesome hardware that is being advertised as one of the fastest mobile chipsets out on the market (Qualcomm MSM7201a, which has impressive specs on paper), but it runs video and games slower than my Dell Axim PocketPC produced back in 2003.
Overall, this is a great phone that with an impressive number of features. If you can excuse the mediocre video playback and lack of OpenGL ES support, this is an ideal phone. But if you're looking for a robust multimedia device that can handle 640x480 videos as well as 3D games, I'd suggest avoiding HTC phones until they fix their drivers.
0 comments:
Post a Comment