Individual Eleven – The World's Cyberbrain

In case you have not been following my Twitter feed, I have been frantically putting my life in order before I left for my holiday to Chicago. Apart from the rapid drop from 34000 to something-quite-low feet within a matter of seconds during descent, I landed safely yesterday afternoon. I am looking forward to the epic exploration into the unknown, in this wonderful city.

I had not slept since Thursday; I had too many butterflies in my stomach to get much sleep on Friday. I did just get some prime snooze time after a very long day, but still I will need to acclimatise myself to the current time zone of minus 6 hours GMT.

Being a heavy technology user, I have brought along some of my trusty gadgets that has served me well on past trips. So what exactly do I pack in my suitcase?

Footnote: You may notice a lot of Sony products, no I am not a Sony fangirl they just happen to produce products I wanted at the time.

I decided to upgrade from a N95 to the HTC Touch HD. “oooo it looks like an iPhone”, well yes pretty much every touch screen mobile phone looks like the Jesus phone. But alas this is where the likeness ends. You see, when you pick up the phone out of its exquisite box, it feels solid and oh so pretty. Not that the iPhone isn’t pretty and solid but this baby just oozes quality at every corner. For me, it has a higher tingle factor than the iPhone did when I first used it.

It is based on Windows mobile, what no Android I hear you cry! Yes I know I was a bit disappointed about that too, but that Touch Flo 3D interface they plonked on top is quite marvellous. The bottom bar scrolls along with a glide of your finger, you also get tactile feedback from button presses via small vibrations. I will be totally honest with you, I have had no problems with Windows Mobile on my HTC Shift and I doubt I will on this. It just, works. Yes previous iterations of the OS were extremely buggy with random crashes, but I believe the combination of HTC’s technical wizardry and Microsoft’s platform goes merrily hand in hand. It is very intuitive from the off, if I need to read the manual to get a mobile to work how I want within the first 15 minutes then something is wrong.

The screen is gorgeous, with a resolution of 480 x 800 which I believe is higher than the iPhone. Tucked unobstrusively at the bottom is a stylus, I didn’t even notice it initially. Normally a stylus would be housed at the top on most PDA like devices, but it seems more convenient at the bottom. It is also held in magnetically to prevent it from dropping accidentally. You also get an 8GB micro SD card, spare stylus and suede slip case. Nice. Also another fancy thing is the built in accelerometer, load up the game called Teeter for some marble tilting action. You may get funny looks on the train though.

Software wise it is fully loaded with apps. Google maps, portable version of YouTube and the built in GPS is quite handy. Being Windows Mobile, you can very easily add your own applications and games as there are literally hundreds of thousands out there. I have a Gameboy emulator I need to install and play around with. The Weather one is quite nice, with animated snowflakes, current temperature and time. You can add multiple places if you travel regularly.

Additional technical specifications is as you would expect from HTC:
4 inch 65K TFT screen 480 x 800 pixel resolution
Wifi
GSM/Edge/3G/HSDPA connectivity
SDHC card slot, max 32GB
Bluetooth
512mb ROM
288mb DDR RAM
FM Radio with RDS
5MP camera (but no flash, bummer)
1350 mAh battery
etc…

Suffice it to say, you will NOT be needing any other device to be fully connected while on the move. The verdict is out on battery life as I use it more (only had this for 2 days). The HSDPA connectivity is reliable, I can’t say the same thing for the iPhone from my experience.

Where can I get one?

Yes, this is where it can get slightly tricky. For our US counterparts I don’t think any carrier has picked this up which is surprising, as a lot of people would love this as an iPhone alternative. They really need to sort themselves out over there. For the UK and our European cousins, the unit is available from Orange and TMobile. You CAN get this from O2, but not directly. I got mine from www.mobiles.co.uk I had to wait over 2 weeks as it has been popular. With a 24 month contract the phone is free with 600 mins and 500 texts for £30 a month. They are currently doing a promotion where you get the first 9 months at half price line rental. I think O2′s tactic is to not undermine the iPhone, hence their reluctance to stock this in their official line up.

First impressions verdict: I love it, the interface is silky smooth, there’s not as many proprietory locks as other devices and it seems reliable. Did I mention that lovely screen?!

Pics to follow very shortly!