Hands-On With HTC’s First Laptop

ORLANDO – Smartphone maker HTC announced the first major surprise of the CTIA wireless trade show this year by unveiling the Shift, its first Windows Vista PC. The company also displayed a US version of the Advantage, a device that straddles the line between a large PDA and an ultralight laptop.

These products are the two most impressive of HTC’s planned 10 to 12 product launches this year, marketing vice president Todd Achilles said during a meeting with PC Magazine last week. Among the other product launches will be new smartphones for CDMA carriers with Verizon, Sprint, Alltel and Telus using a new Qualcomm chipset that “lets us get down to a price point never reached before,” Achilles said.

Until now, HTC has mostly made Windows Mobile smartphones, such as the Cingular 2125, 3125, 8125 and 8525 and the T-Mobile MDA and SDA. The HTC Shift, which PC Magazine had the chance to test, looks like a tablet, but fits in a large coat pocket. More specifically, it’s about the size of two DVD cases stacked on top of each other, and we estimated the weight between 1.5 and 1.8 pounds.

The Shift operates on Windows Vista Business Edition and includes tablet extensions for writing on the screen with the included stylus. To place the Shift into Laptop mode, slide the screen back and tilt it up to a 75-degree angle..

The Shift’s keyboard is much improved than the ones we’ve seen on other sub-laptops like the Sony UX and OQO Model 02. The keys are small and tight, but with actual travel: when you push a key, you push it down and it springs back like on a real keyboard, not a thumb-board. We estimated the key pitch at about 17 mm.

HTC released a few more, but not all, of the specs for the Shift. It dons a 7-inch, 800×480 touchscreen, 1GB of RAM, 30GB hard drive, Bluetooth 2.0, Wi-Fi 802.11g, tri-band HSDPA and EDGE for cellular connectivity. Along with the touchscreen, you can navigate with a tiny Synaptics touchpad on the right-hand side of the screen; there’s a fingerprint reader just below that for security. A small, 1.2-megapixel webcam sits on the upper left hand corner of the device. HTC wouldn’t comment on the processor or graphics chipset, but told us that the device supports Windows Vista’s Aero user interface graphics.

However, the Shift doesn’t come without its shortcomings. There are only a few ports: a VGA out, SD card slot, and one USB port. A dock or port replicator might be available when it launches, HTC said.

Most importantly, the Shift has a lust factor. It’s bigger than other nanoportables like the OQO, but its soft metallic luster, high-res screen and real-looking keyboard made us, at least, believe that could get some work done on it. The device will launch in the third quarter of this year through “standard PC channels,” not at cell phone stores, and it will be “aggressively priced,” HTC reps conveyed.