Of all the news we reported this year, the most surprising story might have been that HTC will be making phones for the Google Android project. HTC has always been a stalwart of the Windows Mobile camp, loyal to both Microsoft and the carriers that sell HTC phones under their own brand. This year, we saw HTC move away from carrier branding, with phones like “Touch by HTC on Sprint” that retain the HTC title. But we never imagined that HTC would develop phones for someone else.
Making things better
They must have been chomping at the bit to try something different. HTC has some of the most solid, if not exciting, designs on the smartphone market. Their phones have a good build quality, especially in the keyboards, and HTC usually goes to some length to make the Windows Mobile OS more usable with their devices. This year, we saw the TouchFLO interface on top of the HTC Touch, as well as the Neo interface on the T-Mobile Shadow. Both offered some improvements to Windows Mobile 6, but made us wonder, what if there was no Windows buried beneath?
We’re excited to see what HTC can come up with. We’ve had problems with HTC phones in the past, especially the touch, because of issues with performance and responsiveness of the interface. We’ve always suspected that issues with Windows Mobile could be to blame, and off-record informers have suggested that “driver issues” are at hand. When asked, HTC reps honorably take all the blame, and the credit, for any device they ship, and won’t suggest any cause for the problem. They simply hope to make things better in the future.
Is that music we hear?
We think Android will be a great opportunity for HTC to make things better in the near future. HTC has yet to produce a true multimedia smartphone, and we are definitely interested to see what the company comes up with. HTC is ahead of the game in terms of touchscreen interface design. Even with its problems, and they are significant, the structure and design of the TouchFLO interface is still superior to anything we’ve seen on a major manufacturer besides Apple. The LG Voyager and Samsung F700 phones, for instance, don’t come close.
Bigger is better
HTC is also looking at different hardware categories. We’ll be watching for wide availability of the HTC Shift, the company’s UMPC. Unlike most UMPCs, which flub the hardware keys, the Shift resembles the much smaller AT&T Tilt, with a slide-out, tilting keyboard. UMPCs haven’t been catching on yet, but the Shift seems more like a new design for a subcompact laptop than a small tablet PC, so we’re curious to give it a try. More importantly, perhaps, now that HTC has taken a baby step away from its symbiotic relationship with Microsoft, will we see other operating systems show up on the HTC Shift?
How about the HTC Advantage? That device predated Intel’s Mobile Internet Device idea, but seems to fit the general form and function of Intel’s prototype. We would be interested in seeing an update to the Advantage, perhaps with a new operating system to boot. Ubuntu, anyone?
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