Bringing Smartphone Features on the Masses From the HTC Smart

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The last quarter of 2009 saw rumors circulating on the internet about a newhtc online that is certainly heading to break the HTC tradition of being an exclusive smartphone maker. It's the HTC Touch B how the on the internet mobile community couldn't think are going to be the very first full-featured dumb phone from a company that has made its mark as an exclusive smartphone maker.

Well, HTC just confirmed it last January 7 and made the rounds of the last CES in Las Vegas. The world's very first dumb phone from the Taiwan-based smartphone maker debuts this spring as the HTC Smart.

Ironic for its moniker, it is a dumb phone because it doesn't run a true operating method that defines what a smartphone is. Instead, it runs on an off-the-shelf Qualcomm BREW Mobile Platform using a 300 MHz processor. BREW stands for Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless that is certainly being positioned like a mobile platform that promises cool apps to the low end markets.

Smart Features for your Dumb Phone

First off, it is a quad band GSM/EDGE/GPRS with 3G/UMTS and HSDPA so you are able to get on inside your social networking and downloading on the internet at high speeds. Keeping the cost down often methods no WiFi. But you nonetheless get Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR including a miniUSB 2.0 for local data transfers.

It seems and feels like a smartphone turned off using a 104 x 55 x 12.8 mm monoblock physique dominated by a big 2.8" LCD display. Again, to retain the cost down, you only get a resistive touchscreen and 256k colors. Turned on, you get the same appear and think of an HTC smartphone with its HTC Sense UI. And you get the expected accelerometer to auto-rotate your viewing in accordance with handset orientation

Multimedia features are everything you are able to expect for your full-featured handset. It comes with an FM radio and assist for all the image, video and audio file formats. You also get Bluetooth A2DP for wireless stereo earphones but it also comes using a 3.5mm jack for normal wired headphones.

Imaging is so-so using a Three megapixel fixed focus camera with LED flash. Talk time is only 7 hours and standby time is 19 days from a fully charged 1100 mAh Lithium ion battery. There's a decent 256 MB RAM and 256 MB ROM expandable to 32 GB from its microSD slot.

What is HTC Thinking?

Some might call this move a calculated desperate act to win a bigger market share at a time when mid-to-high end markets are shrinking of the economic recession. HTC's accompanying press release claims that it has "always focused on listening to consumers and setting the stage for new mobile categories and also thehtc desire could be the response to consumer demand within the globe for an easier-to-use, affordable smartphone." That is what HTC's CEO Peter Chou would like us to believe. Except that it is not a smartphone.

HTC can be on to anything as the markets extremely couldn't care if what they are using is a smartphone or not. Geeks might know the difference, but for as long the handset does its work wonderfully, it couldn't care less.