The last quarter of 2009 saw rumors circulating online about a newhtc online that may be going to break the HTC tradition of getting an exclusive smartphone maker. It is the HTC Touch B that the online mobile community couldn’t consider will be the first full-featured dumb phone from a company that has produced its mark as an exclusive smartphone maker.
Well, HTC just confirmed it last January 7 and produced the rounds with the last CES in Las Vegas. The world’s first dumb phone during the Taiwan-based smartphone maker debuts this spring as the HTC Smart.
Ironic for its moniker, it is a dumb phone as it does not run a genuine operating system that defines what a smartphone is. Instead, it runs on an off-the-shelf Qualcomm BREW Mobile Platform with a 300 MHz processor. BREW stands for Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless that may be getting positioned like a mobile platform that promises cool apps on the low end markets.
Smart Features in your Dumb Phone
First off, it is a quad band GSM/EDGE/GPRS with 3G/UMTS and HSDPA so you possibly can get on within your social networking and downloading online at high speeds. Keeping the price down often approaches no WiFi. But you still get Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR and a miniUSB 2.0 for local info transfers.
It seems and feels like a smartphone turned off with a 104 x 55 x 12.8 mm monoblock body dominated by a big 2.8″ LCD display. Again, to maintain the price down, you only get a resistive touchscreen and 256k colors. Turned on, you get the same seem and consider of an HTC smartphone with its HTC Sense UI. And you get the expected accelerometer to auto-rotate your viewing in accordance with handset orientation
Multimedia features are everything you possibly can expect in your full-featured handset. It comes with an FM radio and help for all of the image, video and audio file formats. You also get Bluetooth A2DP for wireless stereo earphones but it also comes with a 3.5mm jack for regular wired headphones.
Imaging is so-so with a 3 megapixel fixed focus camera with LED flash. Talk time is only 7 hours and standby time is 19 days from a fully charged 1100 mAh Lithium ion battery. There is a decent 256 MB RAM and 256 MB ROM expandable to 32 GB from its microSD slot.
What is HTC Thinking?
Some may call this move a calculated desperate act to win a bigger industry share at a time after mid-to-high end markets are shrinking with the economic recession. HTC’s accompanying press release claims that it has “always focused on listening to buyers and setting the stage for new mobile categories as well as thehtc desire will be the response to buyer demand about the globe for an easier-to-use, affordable smartphone.” That is what HTC’s CEO Peter Chou would like us to believe. Except that it is not a smartphone.
HTC can be on to anything as the markets really couldn’t care if what they are using is a smartphone or not. Geeks may know the difference, but for as extended the handset does its work wonderfully, it couldn’t care less.
