HTC Shift. First impressions review.

In order to write my hands-on report about the HTC Shift I’ve brought myself down off Carrypad hill and down into town. I’m in Starbucks and am connected via HSDPA on the Shift. Actually I’m the only person here with a PC. There’s a guy sitting across from me sending a text but, as it often is in Europe, people seem to be using that old, tried and tested method of communication – speech. I feel quite embarrassed to be working in this place of rest! [Edit: 1st public iPhone sighting. (Germany) It had to be in Starbucks!]

Read on…

That”s not the only embarrassing thing. Within 5 minutes of opening the Shift the battery icon changed to ‘warning’ as I entered the last 20%. I’ve had to connect my Tekkeon which kind of defeats the object of taking such a small device. I knew it would happen. Every time I pick the Shift up im worried about battery life. I cant even leave it on standby as it loses 2% an hour. Just half a day’s standby and you’re in the sub-hour danger zone. Hibernate would of course help but starting from hibernate is slower than a cold startup! Battery life is not one of the strong points of the Shift!
As a piece of gadgetry its an amazing device. If you’ve looked at images of videos of the device you’ll probably agree that it looks slick and interesting. Its an important feature for a consumer device. First impressions count and impressing the person sitting next to you is even more important. The problem is, this ain’t no consumer device. Its targeted at the mobile professional so while it might impress the other salesmen at the annual Christmas meeting, if its not usable, its a loser! So lets take a few usage scenarios and outline how the Shift performs.

Browsing/Reading.
The browsing/reading activity on a PC as best done sitting down with a device in one or two hands. A keyboard isn’t needed but navigation is. Some slate-style devices have a little mouse pointer on the frame. Others have a touchscreen. Others, like the Shift waste 15mm2 of space and put a next-to-useless mouse pad on the frame. Gigabyte did it on the U60. Packard Bell did it on the Easynote XS20 and all of them are poor. I think I understand why they are there. Its 50% engineering (they are flat and require no moving parts) and its 50% poor testing. I bet they test these with real customers and ask them to compare with a mouse pointer. They give the device to someone for a day and say ‘let us know what you think.’ After 24 hours the tester comes back and says ‘The mouse pointer sucks. The pad is far easier to get used to.’ Its not wrong of course. Mouse pads are easier to use but over time, the mouse pointer is faster and more accurate. Accuracy is so important on a small screen but unfortunately in the end the OED’s choose the mouse pad based on potential customer feedback. Sigh! Fortunately for HTC, the touchscreen is great for fingers. Not only is it a superbly accurate, light and evenly distributed touch layer but using a finger on an 800×480 7″ screen is actually quite easy. I’ve been using 1024×600 screens on the SH8 and Q1 ultra recently and on those, finger navigation is really tough and error prone. Phew! Saved by the touchscreen. As a viewer/browser, its great.
Oh. One more point to note on the topic of ‘viewing.’ There’s no rotation capability on this demo model.

Data input
I rarely browse without having to input data. Although most of my bookmarks for websites are saved, I always end up wanting to type something new new in. Its often a forum reply or a form but more often than not, its a search or an email. I imagine its the same with most other people too and so at this point the ‘slate’ needs an input mechanism. With the HTC Shift you have 5 options. 1) Tablet Input panel on-screen keyboard. It works fine. Just as on other slates. 2) Tablet input panel handwriting input. Problem. The soft touch screen means you get ‘vectoring’ as your palm touches other parts of the screen. Its possible to position the input panel at the base of the screen though so while its not perfect, its possible 3) Slide open the keyboard and use it as a ‘slider.’ Problem. Its too wide. I had originally thought that it would be possible but I was wrong. Its too wide to use as a comfortable thumboard. The 5″ width of the OQO is far better. 4) Tilt the screen up and use it as a mini laptop. Wonderful. This works very well indeed. You can’t touch type on this keyboard but its way faster than thumbing or any sort of on-screen keyboard. After just a few days I’m cruising along really nicely on this keyboard. As with all small notebooks the device is so tiny that you need to find a fairly high table if you want to do anything more than a few paragraphs. I’m sitting here in the coffee shop now and I can already feel the strain on my neck and back. 5) The final method, and one that I’ve never used before, is a kind of one-hand hold and tap method. Open the device as a slider and hold it with one hand. Use the other hand to tap out your text. Its slow but easy. At 800gms though, it doesn’t take long for the device to get heavy. Its a jack of many mobile trades and that’s the advantage here. There isn’t a place where the Shift can’t be used but don’t expect to use it for long periods in any of them.

The Shift incorporates a 3.5G cellular data modem. Its actually part of a second, windows mobile device that has been embedded into the hardware but this is irrelevant because using HSDPA at 3.6mbps is a seamless, smooth and often, very fast operation from Windows Vista. The antenna is superb and if you find yourself in an area with HSDPA coverage its like bringing your home broadband connection with you. So confident am I of the connection on the device that I’m writing this on Google documents. Auto-save is working and in the background, Gmail is doing its refresh thing. With Wifi and Bluetooth too, every angle is covered. It has to be said that this is one of the cheapest HSDPA capable PCs in the world and even if it wasn’t, its a feature that’s only available in a select number of PCs. The Shift might reach the shortlist purely because of this mobile feature.
In terms of pure computing capability, the HTC Shift is a low-end performer. In terms of UMPCs, its probably in the top quartile of performers and it will satisfy most needs. Personally I’m quite a ‘thin’ user and there isn’t a PC available that not powerful enough for me to continue my business but I don’t thing there would be many performance problems running office app’s one at a time. I’ve had 250MB of Photoshop CS3 running on a device like this before (The Kohjinsha SH6 uses the same CPU and GPU) and the performance was fine for basic operations.The biggest problem for complex applications is actually screen real-estate and not performance. These programs are written with big screens in mind and often have to be optimised for small screens. Vista highlights the screen size problem every now and again too by placing a dialogue off the screen but the resolution change button brings that into view quickly. 1024×600 isn’t bad but you wouldn’t want to use it at table-top distance. Text is too small and a little bit fuzzy for that. 1024×600 is surprisingly good in close-quarters, handheld use though.

Speaking of Vista it works quite well once its settled down past its optimization phase which seems to occur after every resume and for an extended period after boot up. I’m running aero with no noticeable effect on performance here. Vista annoys in other ways though. I hate the fact that on this 40GB drive I have only 13GB free for data. Its a result of Vista’s HUGE footprint and HTC’s decision to provide a recovery partition for a quick restore-to-factory-settings operation. 13GB is going to be enough for most people but who you buy a device with 40GB, you don’t expect to be able to use only 30% of it!

While I remember I want to mention the brightness. Its very nice. Definitely 2nd gen! In this bright cafe I’m using a 40% setting. Full daylight usage should be fine with the exception of full sunlight scenarios.

So on to one of the ‘features’ of the HTC Shift that is the root of a lot of questions on the forum here. Snap Vue is the name that HTC give to their windows mobile active home screen software and it operates in the HTC shift as a second computing device. Think of having a pocketPC and a computer connected via USB and sharing the keyboard, speakers and screen. Then cut down the software on the pocketPC to email, calendar,, contacts, weather and a 3G configuration app that shares its Internet via the USB. That’s what you get inside the Shift. The ain advantage is that it can run for a couple of days picking up emails either by polling or by push services. You can shut Vista right down and have an instant-on emailer at your fingertips. It IS a great feature but I wonder how much more useful it is over a smartphone. Checking and answering a quick email on a smartphone is bound to be quicker. Maybe its intended for going through emails on the train or plane. Personally it serves no purpose for me at all except to provide the HSDPA connectivity. I also find it frustrating that there’s a smartphone in there that can only be used for emails and calendar and contacts. There’s no syncing capability with the Vista component. There’s no shared filesystem. No access to Wifi, SD card or USB port from it and not even a notes application to hand. It would have been far more efficient to write this with the battery saving SnapVue component than having to attach my external battery to work with Vista. That’s just silly. And what about RSS feeds. Simple browsing. IT seems that these features have just been ignored. It seems like a wasted opportunity to me. Is it there purely because HTC decided it would be cheaper for the 3G modem I ask myself.

As I move to the end of my 2nd coffee though I better wrap this up by highlighting some other important aspects. Here they are in FAQ form.

• How’s the fingerprint reader? OK. It works. Integrates with Vista logins and with IE7 as a password bypass but I had some problems with Firefox. It also needs an average of four swipes before it picks up the correct fingerprint match. Maybe some re-training is needed here
• How are the speakers? Good quality. Loud. As good as the class leader, the Q1P
• How good is the VGA out? I tested it with a 1440×900 monitor and it drives an extended desktop very smoothly.
• Webcam quality? Good. Low light response seems very good.
• Is the memory or disk upgradeable. I guess you could take the device apart but I haven’t and its not something supported by HTC.

Short battery life really takes some of the excitement away from the Shift and not being able to thumb the keyboard reduces its capability in a two-handed mode. Lack of disk space reduces its ability to be used as a media device and the snap-vue features are far better located on a smartphone if quick email access is something you require. On the positive side it is better than most UMPCs of 2006. It beats the Q1 for features. Its got a far brighter screen than many other umpcs and the touchscreen is excellent for finger usage. The keyboard isn’t for touch typing but its well engineered and I’ve managed to reach some fairly high speed typing rates. Add broadband-quality cellular Internet,access the great styling and what I consider to be a good value price point and you’ve got a great package.

For computing between computers, the Shift is one of the best mobile PCs you could have. Its not a workhorse for any particular task but serves as a great do-it-all mobile PC for almost every task in almost any location.

More info, videos, reviews, images and external links to HTC Shift info can be found on the UMPCPortal HTC Shift product page. I’m also answering questions in this forum thread. Feel free to fire-away!

Thanks to Expansys for the loan of the HTC Shift.

[Written and edified in 2.5 hours at Starbucks on the HTC Shift with lots of nice coffee!]