HTC Smart – a wallet friendly smartphone
A few years ago the “boom” sector of the mobile phone industry was touted as the low-end market. Companies such as Nokia poured development and marketing resources into cheap, simple handsets for markets such as India and Africa. “Less” was going to be the next big growth opportunity. The launch of iPhone changed all that. Not the first smartphone, or even necessarily the best (especially in its original incarnation) the iPhone shifted the mobile phone industry’s focus back on the high end and prompted the multi-touch screen, app store gold rush we are in the middle of right now. However, this is shift in focus has left a gap in the market for low to mid-end consumers for an affordable smartphone – a gap HTC are hoping to fill with the HTC Smart – an affordable and easy to use smartphone.
I’ve never found smartphones hard to use, but then again I work for a gadget blog and have installed Linux on my old 3G iPod so I may not be the best judge. I do however find them expensive, so was interest to see what the HTC would offer. Unfortunately pricing data was not available at this moment in time. Running Qualcomm’s Brew Mobile Platform and launching in the UK, Ireland and Germany in April 2010 the HTC Smart will focus on widgets, browsing and connectivity.
“More and more people are craving advanced mobile phone experiences with email, web browsing and social networking but the cost and complexity often represent a significant obstacle for many. The HTC Smart introduces this functionality in an intuitive phone that is affordable,” said Peter Chou, chief executive officer, HTC Corporation. “With the HTC Smart, HTC and Telefónica share a similar vision for bringing easy-to-use, affordable smartphone experience to the masses.”
The HTC smart runs what it calls “widgets” which look and sound like what the rest of us call apps that allows access to contacts, photos music etc. HTC Friend Stream seems like a mobile version of Brizzly, and allows you to integrate social networking streams like Twitter, Flickr, Facebook into one simple flow of updates, images and links. Other than that standard smartphone features like Internet, music and email are all thrown in. It may not be the most exciting smartphone on the market, but with a solid feature set and (hopefully) competitive pricing it doesn’t have to be.
