Jason Dunn
09-15-2008, 08:00 PM
<p>This is an unboxing and first impressions video of the <a href="http://www.telusmobility.com/on/pcs/handset_htc_s640.shtml" target="_blank">HTC S640</a>, a CDMA 1xEVDO Windows Mobile phone that's sold by <a href="http://www.telusmobility.com" target="_blank">Telus</a> in Canada, and as far as I can tell, it's <em>only </em>sold by Telus. So even though this phone has been out since late 2007, I was interested in taking it for a spin because there are virtually no reviews of it anywhere online. It runs Windows Mobile Standard 6, meaning it's a non-touch screen phone and has a QVGA screen, WiFi, Bluetooth, and a microSD slot. It also has a full QWERTY keyboard and shares its lineage with products like the HTC Excalibur and Cavalier. I've long held that the T-Mobile Dash I have is the best Windows Mobile Standard smartphone ever made, but being stuck at EDGE speeds got old really quick.</p><p><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="601" height="453" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1593000&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=ff9933&fullscreen=1" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="601" height="453" src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1593000&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=ff9933&fullscreen=1" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object><br /><a href="http://vimeo.com/1593000?pg=embed&sec=1593000"></a></p><p>There's another thing that made this phone interesting to me: my wife would be using it. I'm using a Samsung Jack (Blackjack II) with Rogers, our monopolistic GSM carrier, and my wife Ashley is with Telus, our main CDMA carrier herein Western Canada. For several years now, she's been a two-device user, using variations of the smallest iPAQs on the market, most recently the iPAQ 1940, and a Motorola KRZR for phone-calling duties. She preferred the large screen on the iPAQ and she synchronized her email and PIM data with a <a href="http://www.4smartphone.net" target="_blank">4smartphone</a> hosted Exchange account. She wanted her phone to be just a phone...until she started doing more text messaging. Her skills with T9 were lacking, so a QWERTY smartphone started to make a lot of sense. And since data plans in Canada were finally more reasonable ($30/month for unlimited email + Web), she wanted a Windows Mobile smartphone.</p><p>I'll be following up this first impressions video with a Q&A interview - it's been really interesting to watch what my wife liked about the S640, what she didn't like, and what she thought of Windows Mobile 6 (sadly, there's still not 6.1 update from Telus).</p>