Windows Mobile 6.5 has finally come out, and with the HTC Imagio, they make it somewhat useable thanks to Microsoft giving the carriers and handset manufaturers a little give and take when it comes to using the mobile OS.
The Lowdown
The Imagio is a touchscreen Windows Mobile 6.5 handset with a 3.6 inch WVGA screen, Wi-Fi, GPS, a 5-megapixel camera, 3.5mm headphone jack, microSD storage expansion (with no included card), it is also the first smartphone capable of V CAST Mobile TV, and it has a little kickstand.
It costs $200 on contract with Verizon after a $100 rebate.
The Handset
The phone is made by HTC who puts out quite a bit of hardware, but the sad fact is that they keep the specs somewhat similar. This one sports a 528MHz Qualcomm based chipsets but it only has 256MB of RAM, so it can be sluggish and unresponsive at times, and the device itself is pretty thin, about the size of the iPhone but a larger screen.
The front has a perforated grille, which gives it a good secure feel in your hand, and the bottom row of buttons sport the usual green/red call buttons, a Windows Start menu button, a back button and a V Cast button, which you can customize.
The Software
This is Windows Mobile 6.5, so I didn’t expect much because I moved away from Windows mobile devices because they tended to crash and be buggy. HTC has done a fantastic job of hiding the fact that you are using Windows Mobile. They replace the homescreen with a nice clock and weather, and have only the relevant items on the homescreen. the start menu is replaced with one that uses large icons, and Mobile Internet Explorer, they said no thank you and replaced it with Opera Moblie. This device is quite usable, and with the Windows Marketplace and MyPhone backup service, if you have to use windows mobile, then an HTC device is definately the way to go.
V CAST TV
V CAST TV is based on Flo TV, and is in reality quite an impressive technology, it’s like having a mini cable box on your phone, and it offers live broadcasts of some basic cable channels such as CBS, Fox, CNN and Comedy Central. Video quality is fair and it’s definately watchable.
The main problem I have with this is that it’s live TV, and while that is a novel idea, video on demand would be more useful, and the pricing is rather high (see full review here).
Final Thoughts
The phone is good, and HTC has done a good job at hiding the fact that you are actually using Windows Mobile 6.5, but there were more times that the phone froze up or at one time it actually hard reset itself, this was frustrating, but the phone did what it was supposed to and syncing worked great on a Windows 7 machine. Mac syncing was a little more tedious, but with a 3rd party program it worked fine.
I would’ve liked to give this a better review, but Windows Mobile still has a long way to go, and it’s no iPhone killer, and next week I will be posting my review of the Android based Motorola Droid. So if your job or your personal preference is a Windows Mobile device, I would say this is one of the better ones out there, but if you are not tied to Windows Mobile, then you might want to hold off.
How did you get it to sync with a Mac? I have tried the missing sync with no luck.