Search Info On BlackBerries
By Adam Deane
The recently released HTC 7 Pro smartphone for Windows Phone 7 may turn out to be a milestone device for the operating system and a strong indication of whether Microsoft's mobile operating system will achieve any market share. Back in 2009 Google's Android was in a similar position as a tiny upstart in the face of the huge success of Apple's iPhone and other giants such as Nokia and Blackberry smartphones. One of the devices that turned around Android's fortunes was the Motorola Droid, one of the well specified Android smartphones that also included a physical keyboard and proved hugely popular, helping to drive Android adoption in the process. Can the HTC 7 Pro with its physical keyboard achieve this for Windows Phone 7?
The first touchscreen phones came as early as 2000 for mobile phones and even earlier in 1984 with a concept design for a land line phone by Apple. These were generally poor and not that popular, with the smaller and lower resolution screens of the day and less advanced and less responsive touchscreens they did not truly catch on until the released of Apple's first iPhone in 2007 which created the modern idea of true smartphones. Before this, phones had physical interfaces, usually numerical pads for dialling with multiple presses used to input letters for texts. Personal organizers featured full miniature keyboards similar to the desktop QWERTY layouts and these made their way into Blackberry phones for business users to write email.
As with the Blackberry devices the HTC 7 Pro is intended to appeal to business users with its physical keyboard, making typing emails and texts easier and more accurate. This also meshes well with the Windows Phone support for Microsoft Outlook which many businesses already use. In terms of hardware the HTC phone is somewhat disappointing. It runs on a single core processor running at 1 GHz, matched to 576 megabytes of random access memory and 8 gigabytes of storage. Along with its 5 megapixel camera and a 3.6 inch 480 by 800 resolution screen this is a last generation phone on the hardware front which will be greatly outperformed by smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S II and the rumoured new iPhone.
Fortunately its main selling point, the physical keyboard has been done well with well-spaced keys and solid responsiveness, typing is quick and accurate. Its sliding hinge mechanism between the screen and the keyboard is also a good feature, letting the user angle the screen as they wish relative to the keyboard rather like a tiny notebook.
However as a result of possessing a physical keyboard the phone suffers the same fate as all sliding keyboard smartphones which is to be bloated and heavy. It weighs 185 grams and is 16 mm thick, contrast that with the recently released Samsung Galaxy S II smartphones which are only 116 grams and a slim 8.9mm. The HTC 7 is almost twice the size for a far less powerful phone. It is also an expensive phone for the specification level at a 430 price tag for a sim-free unlocked phone and starting at 30 per month for free phone contracts. The physical keyboard gets a significant price mark-up for the HTC 7.
Advantages of touchscreen phones include being smaller and lighter with more elegant designs that lack the need for hinge and slide mechanisms. They also tend to be where the cutting edge technology is introduced as companies no longer see physical keyboards as an important feature; instead it is a niche that the better technology reaches somewhat later. The design trend for smartphones is definitely toward entirely touchscreen-drive designs. It is rumoured that the next iPhone from Apple will feature only one physical button and will otherwise be entirely touch driven. It is likely that other manufacturers will follow this design lead.
The sole advantage of physical keyboards which had been more accurate and faster text entry is also being eroded rapidly or even entirely passed by as capacitive touchscreens grow more responsive and new methods of text input are devised. Two of these methods are Swype, a finger dragging interface where the user joins up the letters of the word they want in a single motion and Swiftkey, an advanced and learning predictive text program which usually only requires the user enter a few letters before it suggests the intended word for you. Both of these have lead to far faster and more accurate text entry via a touchscreen interface.
Smartphones featuring physical keyboards seem likely to be a dying breed as more users become used to the ever improving touch interfaces and those who really need a proper keyboard interface move toward better solutions such as the Webtop dock of the Motorola Atrix which converts the smartphones into small notebooks with a full-sized keyboard. The HTC 7 Pro will never the less be an important part of Windows Phone 7's growth, needing to attract business and casual users who prefer physical keyboards to the Microsoft platform, sadly it seems underspecified and too uncompetitive to achieve this.
The first touchscreen phones came as early as 2000 for mobile phones and even earlier in 1984 with a concept design for a land line phone by Apple. These were generally poor and not that popular, with the smaller and lower resolution screens of the day and less advanced and less responsive touchscreens they did not truly catch on until the released of Apple's first iPhone in 2007 which created the modern idea of true smartphones. Before this, phones had physical interfaces, usually numerical pads for dialling with multiple presses used to input letters for texts. Personal organizers featured full miniature keyboards similar to the desktop QWERTY layouts and these made their way into Blackberry phones for business users to write email.
As with the Blackberry devices the HTC 7 Pro is intended to appeal to business users with its physical keyboard, making typing emails and texts easier and more accurate. This also meshes well with the Windows Phone support for Microsoft Outlook which many businesses already use. In terms of hardware the HTC phone is somewhat disappointing. It runs on a single core processor running at 1 GHz, matched to 576 megabytes of random access memory and 8 gigabytes of storage. Along with its 5 megapixel camera and a 3.6 inch 480 by 800 resolution screen this is a last generation phone on the hardware front which will be greatly outperformed by smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S II and the rumoured new iPhone.
Fortunately its main selling point, the physical keyboard has been done well with well-spaced keys and solid responsiveness, typing is quick and accurate. Its sliding hinge mechanism between the screen and the keyboard is also a good feature, letting the user angle the screen as they wish relative to the keyboard rather like a tiny notebook.
However as a result of possessing a physical keyboard the phone suffers the same fate as all sliding keyboard smartphones which is to be bloated and heavy. It weighs 185 grams and is 16 mm thick, contrast that with the recently released Samsung Galaxy S II smartphones which are only 116 grams and a slim 8.9mm. The HTC 7 is almost twice the size for a far less powerful phone. It is also an expensive phone for the specification level at a 430 price tag for a sim-free unlocked phone and starting at 30 per month for free phone contracts. The physical keyboard gets a significant price mark-up for the HTC 7.
Advantages of touchscreen phones include being smaller and lighter with more elegant designs that lack the need for hinge and slide mechanisms. They also tend to be where the cutting edge technology is introduced as companies no longer see physical keyboards as an important feature; instead it is a niche that the better technology reaches somewhat later. The design trend for smartphones is definitely toward entirely touchscreen-drive designs. It is rumoured that the next iPhone from Apple will feature only one physical button and will otherwise be entirely touch driven. It is likely that other manufacturers will follow this design lead.
The sole advantage of physical keyboards which had been more accurate and faster text entry is also being eroded rapidly or even entirely passed by as capacitive touchscreens grow more responsive and new methods of text input are devised. Two of these methods are Swype, a finger dragging interface where the user joins up the letters of the word they want in a single motion and Swiftkey, an advanced and learning predictive text program which usually only requires the user enter a few letters before it suggests the intended word for you. Both of these have lead to far faster and more accurate text entry via a touchscreen interface.
Smartphones featuring physical keyboards seem likely to be a dying breed as more users become used to the ever improving touch interfaces and those who really need a proper keyboard interface move toward better solutions such as the Webtop dock of the Motorola Atrix which converts the smartphones into small notebooks with a full-sized keyboard. The HTC 7 Pro will never the less be an important part of Windows Phone 7's growth, needing to attract business and casual users who prefer physical keyboards to the Microsoft platform, sadly it seems underspecified and too uncompetitive to achieve this.
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To find out more about Windows 7 phones like the HTC 7 Pro or the Samsung Omnia 7 visit www.expansys.com.
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