IntroductionHTC has done it again, introducing their first one-handed QWERTY Smartphone: the HTC Excalibur. The Excalibur is also known as the T-Mobile DASH and the HTC S620. The S620 is a direct competitor of the Motorola Q but offers a lot more features in a smaller more compact design. The Motorola Q GSM version has still not been released and the S620 may take all of its potential sales. The S620 has Windows Mobile 5, 200 MHz processor, built in Wi-Fi, GPRS and EDGE. The S620 is smaller than the Q and has better battery life too. Is the Excalibur worth getting? Should you renew your contract to get it? Read on to find out!!
DesignThe S620 is very small in size. Compared to the
Motorola Q, the it is smaller in length but slightly thicker in width. The whole phone has a soft rubber feel and comes in black. The phone was designed very well. One design aspect of this phone I liked a lot is where the expandable memory is located. Usually phone’s expandable memory is either located on the out side or underneath the battery. The Excalibur’s memory card slot is located under the battery cover but not underneath the actual battery. This way the memory card does not ruin the design and looks of the phone. You can insert or remove the memory without turning off the phone and taking out the battery. The S620 has HotSwap capability, meaning you can remove/insert the memory card while the device is on.
The Excalibur is the first Windows mobile phone with a QWERTY keyboard and can be maneuvered by one hand. Other devices like Blackberries and the Motorola Q have a scroll wheel located on the top right hand side of the phone. Instead of putting a normal scroll wheel on the Excalibur, HTC had decided to change the style but not the scroll concept. The HTC Joggr is the new touch sensitive navigation bar. The navigation bar which is located on the right side of the phone, has four buttons. The top button when tapped twice goes back, the next two buttons are up and down scroll, and the last button is to access Outlook email. You use the touch navigation like it was an actual scroll wheel. To scroll down you would touch the top of the touch navigation and slide you thumb downwards, this motion will scroll down. You do the same to scroll up but place your thumb at the bottom of the navigation and slide your thumb upwards. To select something you just tap the navigation bar twice.
The keyboard looks good and the layout is excellent. The buttons are really small and it is sometimes difficult to type fast with. With the small size of the Excalibur the keyboard could not have been much bigger without making the phone bigger. It was a good idea for the rows of the keys to be spaced out because if they weren’t it would be even harder to type with. The keyboard has a shortcut to the camera, internet explorer and messaging. Overall the keyboard is excellent but the buttons may be too small for some.
The bottom of the phone has a mini USB port. The mini USB is used for rapid charging, syncing with your computer and is used for the stereo headphones. The mini USB has a rubber cover for protection when not in use. I liked the concept of the 3.5mm headphone jack that was on the HTC Universal, it is too bad that the new HTC phones all have mini USB for headphones.
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