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HTC Magician by the example of GSM-smartphone Qtek s100. Part IIHTC Magician by the example of GSM-smartphone Qtek s100. Part I 
Lately digital cameras have been integrated in many things, almost in electric kettles, they are all around - in mobile phones, smartphones (it goes without saying), MP3-players, wristwatches and so on. On the one hand it seems ok, if you don't need an integrated camera, you won't use it, the camera doesn't occupy much space, and it adds little to the price of the final product. On the other hand - ever more companies forbid carrying any cameras to the territory. The camera isn't allowed in public institutions and some other organizations, so you won't get inside with an integrated camera. Later, as the picture quality and resolution rise, camera phone users will face more restrictions. Indeed, security rules prohibit the use of USB-flash drives or other data carriers and notebooks inside a company, there are also many other ways to provide corporate security, however with a built-in camera you can simply copy an important document from paper or a monitor. When the video quality of recorded files is high enough (it will be higher, there is no doubt), so we would have to leave the device at the cinema entrance, for example. We can provide many examples of the restricted use of devices with integrated cameras, however today we have another task. Gradually the manufacturers do understand that integrated cameras impose definite restrictions to the user (especially, business user), that's not the function you may forget, if you don't need it. As the result, there appear models in two modifications: with the integrated camera and without it. HTC doesn't make an exclusion. You can find HTC Blue Angel under some trademarks (O2 XDA III, for example) without a camera. It depends on the wish of the customer. In this case the mobile service provider O2 explains, it meets high demand for Pocket PC smartphones without cameras. The same story with HTC Magician, models based on this platform may appear with/without a camera. Qtek S100 is the first smartphone by the Taiwanese manufacturer that has a 1.3-megapixel camera onboard. The predecessors were equipped with VGA-cameras or hadn't any (the first generation). If we compare with other smartphones this camera takes photos of an average quality. It's far better than in Motorola MPx220, but it loses to Nokia 6630. Naturally its quality is lower than in any "ordinary" digital camera. Have a look at the examples below, the bests photos are done under the daylight.
In the settings you can change picture resolution, the following modes are available:
Other manual camera settings are rich and similar to those for the rest HTC smartphones. So we won't go into details here. The camera records video in MP4 format (you can view the clips using QuickTime application), the highest resolution makes up 240x320. As for the quality of video, it's average, but it's better comparing with HTC Blue Angel. You can manually limit the size of the video file by a definite value. There is H.263 mode to snap video for MMS and Motion-JPEG AVI. Bluetooth
The device features Bluetooth 1.2. Unfortunately HTC didn't install drivers by WIDCOMM (now Broadcom), which became the industrial standard, so there are drivers built in Windows Mobile operating system. With them you can launch basic functions (synchronization, Internet access, vCard exchange, COM-connection emulation, work with Bluetooth-headsets), however some important profiles and main settings are unavailable. As a matter of fact, it's possible to install WIDCOMM drivers on Qtek s100. This way isn't fully legitimate, besides it may provoke unsteady work of the system, and you have to edit the log manually. SpecificationsQtek s100 carries standard 64 MB of RAM onboard, 57.41 MB of which is available to the user. It's enough for normal performance of the device. Flash memory amounts to 7.29 MB. I'd say that's little, however now that the prices for flash-cards (including SD/MMC) go down, it isn't a shortcoming. 
For the first time HTC Pocket PC smartphone involves new Intel XScale PXA272 processor, it works at 416 MHz. As usual we used SPB Benchmark test package. Unfortunately, time goes by and the package becomes less actual, as it doesn't touch upon the opportunities of VGA screens, Wireless MMX technology and graphic accelerators. But we have no alternative to the SPB package, so we have to use it so far. Remember that the results don't fully reflect the real productivity. For tests we've chosen other Pocket PC smartphones. 
This index describes Pocket PC's CPU speed. According to it the Qtek s100 yields to other smartphones by HTC working at 400 MHz. The things stand otherwise, actually. The operations with the floating point and JPEG-file decompression show HTC Magician leading, but the speed of ZIP-compression and the memory bus speed are lower. All this indices are included in the CPU index with different weighs; in this it turned to be lower. 
This index describes Pocket PC file system speed. In separated tests included in this index there is dispersion in the results, the Qtek s100 leads in recording and copying large files, but lags slightly behind in other tests. 
The synchronization speed is high, at the level with the leaders, however it's not the highest. 
Integrated index describes total Pocket PC speed, the Qtek s100 stays behind leaders because of its file system speed. I repeat that the test is one thing, and the real system productivity in applications and games is something different. In my sensation, in real conditions the Qtek s100 doesn't yield to the Qtek 9090, and with Wireless MMX HTC Magician has a definite advantage in graphics, you can watch MPEG4 movies without converting them. To test graphics we ran tests of the PocketQuake game in the mute mode (turn the sound off by nosound 1 console command) leaving other settings unchanged. A little innovative move - we bring in Quake Index to make the results more clear. The index is calculated the following way: ((Demo_1_240x180)*1/6+(Demo_1_320x240)*1/3+(Demo_2_240x180)*1/6+(Demo_2_320x240)*1/3)*1000)/Quake_Index(FS Pocket LOOX 610). 
The results are average, but they are above HTC Blue Angel (Qtek 9090). The video productivity of the Qtek s100 (without optimization for Wireless MMX) proves to be good, however it doesn't make records. 
SoftwareQtek s100 is powered by WM 2003 for Pocket PC Phone Edition, which is the very Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC Second Edition, but extended with several applications to manage phone functions. The set of extra applications may vary in different modifications of HTC Magician, the Qtek s100 has the following: 
Phone. A standard application responsible for phone functions, modified for the smartphone. When you start dialing, a similar search system by contacts or log as in Windows Mobile 2003 for Smartphone gets switched on, that's comfortable. Other phone functions of this application are kept unchanged. 
Caller ID. An application displays the photo assigned to the contact at the incoming call. It's possible to set calls for groups or personal melodies. It removes the defect of the operating system, as the standard functionality doesn't involve personal melodies for each contact or caller photos. 
Album. This utility views the material taken by the camera (photo, video), it has rich functionality. 
SIM Manager works with contacts stored on the SIM-card. 
SIM Tool Kit navigates SIM-menu. 
Windows Media 10. New version of the media player by Microsoft. It got a new design, a comfortable system to organize the content appeared. 
WModem. The device works as an external modem. 
xBackup. A simplest utility for the data backup. It runs only essential operations, nothing more. 
ZIP. ПIt's the application to works with the archive files. ConclusionsHTC Magician is an important product for Windows-smartphones market because of its comparatively small size and the megapixel camera. Many looked forward to such a product that might be called a phone than a handheld computer given its size. Among devices with a sensor screen HTC Magician is the smallest. The platform has no direct rivals among Pocket PC communicators, only Sony Ericsson p900 can be treated as an indirect rival. In all, the model produced good impression with its size and high assembly quality. In essence, HTC Magician is a tiny copy of the previous generation Pocket PC smartphones by HTC extended with the megapixel camera. We can name two shortcomings of the model. Firstly, the design is too simple, however that's subjective. Secondly, it lacks the flip digital keyboard like Sony Ericsson p900 or Rover S1. The network reception quality of Qtek s100 is good. The dynamic sounds less loud than in Qtek 9090, the vibrating alert is average. When the shipments start, the price for Qtek s100 will make up some $700, and during the next year it will fall to $550-600, which is a fair price for this device. Description:
Anton Kotov ([email protected])
Published - 29 November 2004 Have something to add?! Write us... [email protected]
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