The first Windows Phone 7 smartphones
By John Cox,
Network World |
Oct 11, 2010 1:00 AM
PT
In the U.S., the first Windows Phone 7 smartphones will be available on AT&T and T-Mobile beginning in November
Dell, HTC , LG and Samsung all unveiled smartphones running the Windows Phone 7 OS . In the United States, the GSM phones will be available on AT&T and T-Mobile beginning in November. (CDMA phones, such as the HTC 7 Pro on Sprint, will be available in first half of 2011.) Here's a first look at the new phones. Has Microsoft been successful with its mobile overhaul?
Dell Venue Pro
Dell unveiled its expected Windows Phone 7 handset, dubbed Dell Venue Pro, but gave few details. Those, and the phone itself and its pricing, will be forthcoming "soon" according to the company's blog . It's a sleek, high-end handset with a big 4.1-inch WVGA AMOLED multi-touch display. Dell Venue Pro will be offered initially on T-Mobile, not on AT&T.
Dell Venue Pro
The two halves of the phone slide apart vertically to expose the vertically oriented QWERTY keyboard, an approach also used by the Palm Pre smartphone. Dell is using Corning's "Gorilla Glass" for the multi-touch screen, an alkali-aluminosilicate thin-sheet glass that's designed to be a protective cover for high-end displays.
HTC 7 Surround
The HTC 7 Surround has a 3.8-inch touchscreen and a slide-out speaker with integrated Dolby Mobile and SRS WOW HD technology for high-fidelity sound. The speaker slides up out of the handset in a similar way keypads slide out. Memory: ROM, 512 MB, with 16 GB user memory; RAM, 448 MB.
HTC 7 Surround
The Surround has a fold-out kickstand to let users set it up and watch mobile TV or videos on the handset. Other features include: 5-megapixel camera; GPS/aGPS; digital compass, and sensors for motion, proximity and ambient light; video playback formats: MPEG4, H.263, H.264, WMV; audio formats: MP3, AMR-NB, AAC, AAC+, Enhanced AAC+, WMA, WAV. The HTC 7 Surround will be available in the United States through AT&T.
HTC HD7
The HTC HD7 has a 4.3-inch touchscreen, 5-megapixel camera with dual LED flash. One part of the back of the camera acts as a built-in kickstand in case a user wants to set the phone down and play Xbox Live, or watch videos or mobile TV on it. The HD7 will be available in the United States from T-Mobile in mid-November.
HTC HD7
Other features include: GPS functionality with access to turn-by-turn navigation from TeleNav GPS Navigator; 16GB of internal memory; HD video recording. The HTC HD7 is the first device to offer T-Mobile Family Room, an application that helps families keep in touch with a virtual chalkboard, shared calendar events and real-time notifications when any family member posts something for everyone to see.
LG Quantum
The Quantum offers a 3.5-inch WVGA TFT capacitive touchscreen over a full QWERTY keyboard. Dimensions are: 4.7 inches long by 2.34 inches wide by 0.60 inches thick, weighing 6.21 ounces. Inside, a 1500 mAh battery powers the Qualcomm 1GHz Snapdragon processor. Memory: ROM, 512MB, with 16 GB user memory; RAM, 256 MB. It runs on AT&T's 3G HSDPA network, or EDGE. Wi-Fi is 802.11g, not 11n; Bluetooth v2.1 + EDR; USB 2.0 HS. Price via AT&T: $200.
LG Quantum
The Quantum is the only U.S. WP7 handset with a full horizontal QWERTY keyboard. (Dell's Venue Pro has a vertically oriented slide-out keyboard.). The soft keyboard in Windows Phone 7 has gotten good reviews on earlier prototype phones. Other features: Talk time up to six hours, standby time, up to 350; SMS/MMS; Microsoft e-mail options; 5 MP camera with autofocus and LED flash; GPS/aGPS; digital compass, and sensors for motion, proximity and ambient light; LG's DLNA technology lets you transfer videos and photos to networked computers and TVs; video playback formats: MPEG4, H.263, H.264, WMV; audio formats: MP3, AMR-NB, AAC, AAC+, Enhanced AAC+, WMA, WAV
Samsung Focus
The Focus is a thin device with a 4-inch touchscreen that weighs just over 4 ounces. Among other features, it includes access to AT&T's U-Verse Mobile, Xbox Live and Zune. The Xbox Mobile feature is particularly interesting since it lets users play mobile games on their phones with other Windows Phone 7 users. The device also gives access to all the standard Microsoft Office programs and lets you access multiple Outlook e-mail accounts at once.
Samsung Focus
From a specs perspective, the Samsung Focus matches up well against most smartphones on the market today. It has a Qualcomm QSD 8250 processor that clocks in at 1GHz, it has a 5-megapixel camera, 8GB of user memory and the ability to connect both to AT&T's 3G HSPA network and to Wi-Fi. The latter is particularly useful for AT&T customers since AT&T takes pride in its 20,000+ Wi-Fi hotspots in the United States.
HTC 7 Pro
The HTC 7 Pro will be among the first CDMA smartphones running the Windows Phone 7 OS. It has a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard for fast typing. Productivity features for business users include mobile Office software and the ability to manage Outlook e-mail. The Pro will be available in the United States from Sprint in the first half of next year.
IDG News Service correspondent Dan Nystedt contributed to this report.
What do you think? Has Microsoft been successful with its mobile overhaul?
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