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HTC Athena – the realm of UMPCThe model knows as HTC Athena, according to the company’s plans, is arriving in the market in the 1Q of the upcoming 2007. In fact, this communicator sports a world of difference from other offerings available on the market to date. From this model onwards HTC starts utilizing a new indexing system, which will make the Athena appear on the shelves of retail stores as HTC X7500. Our colleagues working for pdaclub.pl published a few live photos of HTC Athena a couple of days ago, in its turn, Mobile-review.com presents you with a comprehensive close-up of this hot proposal and its full specifications. 
It would be a mistake to think of HTC Athena as a successor to a tablet communicator HTC Universal, which will be inherited by another device in future. As for the Athena, as a matter of fact, it comes from a totally different type. In terms of the form-factor, HTC X7500 is already not a communicator that can be seamlessly taken to your ear, yet it is still not a table computer or even a UMPC/Origami. So, what is it then? Let us take a close look at its size and weight. Measuring 133.1x97x20 mm and weighting about 350 g, the X7500 is somewhat more cumbersome compared to HTC Universal’s numbers, which are 127.7x81x25 mm and 285 g respectively. In spite of the company considering this device “still pocketable”, you won’t have a good time dragging it along – dimensions-wise the X7500 goes almost hand in hand with UMPC computers of 2- and 3-G, while its functionality, as of today, is somewhere between PocketPC and UMPC. And one question springs up instantly – do consumers really need such solution and what its field of application is? 
The device sports landscape orientation of controls and candy-bar shaped casing, as well as detachable QWERTY-keyboard (coming in at 4 mm) – such form-factor can be occasionally seen on tablet computers. 
The display is one of the X7500’s highlights, as it utilizes 5” Samsung’s matrix boasting VGA resolution and touch input. Undoubtedly, for a notebook or a tablet PC it’s almost nothing, but still, it is the biggest matrix ever used in communicators. The very unique feature of this communicator is availability of a built-in VGA/TV out (connecter ether via adapter or docking station). The company’s special HTC Ext USB can be linked up with a VGA adapter, while for TV out here is Composite/S-Video adapter. By the way, HTC Ext USB socket supports not only USB client, but host as well, in other words you can make use of various peripherals (for example mouse, keyboard or an external storage). And for the very first time the company provides a wired remote control for music playback management, which can be connected to any headphones compatible with 3.5 mm audio jack. The communicator shows off totally new filling, as in course of its development they almost didn’t turn to the prior solutions. But even though its hardware is of some interest, it brings nothing new to the table. The CPU found on the X7500 is the old XScale PXA270 624 Mhz, while its phone part is handled by Qualcomm MSM6275 (quad-band GSM, UMTS 850/1900/2100 Mhz, GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA). A built-in graphics accelerator, ATI Imageon 2282, is onboard. However the most fundamental leap up is a bundled 10 Gb hard drive with G sensor, allowing the drive to fall into sleep mode if the device starts falling down. At that users will be free to expand this storage space with miniSD memory cards. And such features as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth don’t deserve a special note anymore due to being embedded in nearly each and every communicator by default. 
Similarly to most other HTC-branded solutions, the Athena incorporates a GPS module allowing for satellite navigation – generally speaking, the market supposes that car owner will make the best use of HTC Athena. In addition to everything I said above, I would like to put the following aspects into the limelight – presence of stereo-speakers (3D sound), a 2 Mpix camera module, typical for HTC, and a 2100 mAh battery. The model runs off Windows Mobile 5.0 for Pocket PC, however there is a really good chance that an update to Windows Mobile 6.0 for Pocket PC is coming up. Time to sum everything up. Frankly, this is the most feature-packed communicator to date and it will not let this title slip away for the entire year of 2007. The major novelties, that we are about to see in the upcoming HTC’s models, are built-in hard drive and VGA/TV out. Keeping in mind standard pricing policy applied by HTC, high prime cost and development costs, the price for HTC X7500 is likely to revolve around the level of 1500-2000 USD on release. Apparently, this device won’t be widely popular, even if its price is twice as low. In fact this solution aims at a very narrow target audience, which is even smaller that that of HTC Universal, since a typical business-user has a very portable notebook and, if required, a communicator at his disposal, so that he could use the latter device in cases when a laptop is somewhat out of place. 
The only flicker of hope for HTC X7500 is automobilists and business-users spending much time within their cars. But it is not for sure that they will go for the Athena – on the contrary, they might pick a less expensive UMPC for these purposes. Nevertheless, don’t think that over at HTC they don’t realize the fact that the X7500 has no future on the market. As a matter of fact, this product - that has been in development since the early days of 2005 - is an opportunity to make the solutions, they are planning to use in the future offerings, kick in the market. And a chance to claim the crown of the world’s best Windows Mobile-based manufacturer, among all other things. So, maybe HTC will present us with the next “X”-labeled communicator sporting Windows Vista OS? Preliminary specifications:
Anton Kotov ([email protected]) Have something to add?! Write us... [email protected]
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