The HTC Athena looks like a Smartphone, MicroPC, Carputer and PMP, all-in-one.
UPDATE: New news and images here.
UDATE2. 27.03.07 HTC Now have a UMPC: HTC Shift.
After scratching about for more info on the HTC ultra mobile PC over the last week and after an extremely interesting meeting with a major distributor of HTC equipment in Europe I have been able to refine some of the rumors and information that I’ve read about HTC’s 2007 top-end smartphones.
Firstly though, remember that the Qtek brand will no longer be used? Well, some of the Qtek devices are begin sold off. Interesting for HTC Universal fans is that I’ve seen some super prices on the Qtek 9000. For example, PDAMax in Germany are selling them off for 699 Euro.
This leads us nicely on to the question, ‘Whats coming to replace the Universal?’ Well maybe its Athena, a new HTC device with these specifications: (these appear on Howard Forums.)
– 5″ VGA screen
– 624mhz Intel CPU
– 3g umts (triband)/hsdpa
– quad band gsm w/ edge
– 128mb rom, 8GB storage!
– GPS built-in
– BT 2.0 w/ a2dp
– magnetically attachable keyboard (works like the macbook pro power cord)
– 2100 mAh battery
Based on this specification, Its an almost-ultra mobile PC (VGA screen and WM5 don’t cut it for the rich browsing experience so its definitely outside even my definition of a UMPC.) but its a damn interesting specification that could upset some marketing plans at the low end of the ultra mobile PC spectrum. Namely, Nokia. It will provide the perfect platform for a rich navigation device that could include live traffic and weather info via cellular data. In fact it would make a fantastic Carputer. It will also make a great personal media player. I assume it will have a graphics accelerator included (the 2700g) so there will be no problem playing full-screen videos. I hope that eventually, HTC can perform the same trick as DualCor and get WM5 running with an 800×480 screen size. Browsing would be so much more productive.
I was lucky enough to see the HTC 2007 roadmap with an image and specifications of the Athena device and although I can’t say anything, I guess the person that wrote the specs above saw the same info as I did.
HTC UMPC.
Thinking about the HTC ultra mobile PC in the light of the 5″ Athena information, if would mean that they would have to cleanly differentiate the ultra mobile PC from the Athena in order not to cause confusion and to preserve market space. I would expect the screen size to be a little larger and the form factor to be a little heavier. Something like the Arima/Medion UMPC wouldn’t surprise me. 6″ screen, 500gm weight, 5 hours battery life. This is about as far as the technology can go at the moment and I’d expect HTC to be right up on the leading edge of ultra mobile PC technology.
HTC and VIA are sister companies and so far, VIA lead the race to produce the lowest power-consumption CPUs. The C7-M has proved itself well in the Samsung Q1b (C7-M and VX700 core logic) and there’s still the VIA ‘John’ core-fusion system-on-chip to come yet. When combined with 2007 screen, battery and radio technology we could see system power-consumption reach the 5W average mark which permits weight and size savings. If VIA continue to make processors (the recent stories about Intel asking VIA to stop making processors don’t appear to be true), it would be the most obvious choice of processor for a HTC UMPC.
As for timeframe, well it could be 12 months before we see anything in the shops. Maybe a prototype at CeBit or a launch at Computex is possible but I think they have a lot of work to do yet.
Steve
