TechRader Reviews HD2; Wonders About a Windows Mobile vs. iPhone Battle

[Jon Westfall]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.techradar.com/reviews/phones/mobile-phones/htc-hd2-647049/review' target='_blank'>http://www.techradar.com/reviews/ph...2-647049/review</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"The HTC HD2 is the world's first Windows Mobile-toting phone with a capacitive screen, and also packs the world's largest mobile phone display too. It's also the first WinMo phone to use HTC's Sense UI, previously used on the company's Android handsets, bringing with it Facebook integration and direct Twitter access, as well as masking well the operating system beneath it."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/ppct/auto/1257773709.usr7.jpg" style="border: 0px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>In an extensive review of the HD2 TechRadar compares it to the iPhone (What else is new?) and while a complete review in it's own right, it does make me wonder: Is it fair to compare a business-oriented OS to a consumer-oriented? Or is it just that Windows Mobile doesn't fit nicely into purely business or purely consumer spaces?</p>

[Macguy59]

Is it not the same OS that's used on their "consumer oriented" phones ?

[frankenbike]

The iPhone is a consumer product that a lot of people are using for business. The fact that Microsoft considers the *people* in business as "not consumers" has been their problem all along.

Given the extreme lead times Microsoft believes is acceptable, they should have started jumping to action as soon as they saw what was happening within weeks of the iPhone's release and immediate popularity. They didn't really *start* taking action until the iPhone grabbed significant market share, which took a year for the numbers to start coming in.

Worse, they didn't make the immediate decision to decouple the interface completely from the base OS, so they could change the look and feel of the OS quickly as consumer preferences change.

Still, the Imagio, which is the slower dumber cousin of the HD2, fit what I was looking for. A Windows Mobile iPhone-esque device. The HD2 will be more impressive, though it won't really arrive in the States until it's already last year's news. Seriously, the tech press is drooling over science fiction at this point as far as the US is concerned. The specs blow anything in the market today away, but the HD2 is not IN the market TODAY here. By the time it gets here, it may well be run-of-the-mill.

[jmjstandin]

Living in France, I have had an HD2 for a few days. It's an extraordinary phone, clearly better than anything else on the market, with a completely re-designed interface. HTC are emerging as an innovative software house as well as leading hardware designers. The only thing I miss is a way to quickly enter standard blocks of text (I'm trying to get Dinarsoft Taptext to work on it ...).