Tuesday, September 04, 2007

HTC Tytn II - Back to Geeksville
It's here and more importantly I have one, the follow-up to the wonderful HTC Hermes/Tytn/v1605.

This time with an even faster connection (3.5G), built in GPS, Windows Mobile 6, sliding/tilting screen, finger navigation, 3 Megapixel Camera.

Setup has been easy, put the battery, Mini SD card and SIM Card and turn the device on, you are asked to set your locale, the time and your mobile phone provider, the rest is then setup,

The display is now less colourful, in fact it's black/grey but looks very impressive and seems to work better than with lots of colours, a case of less in more.

The icons are designed for navigating by fingers, meaning you don't have to keep using (and losing) the stylus.
The main screen has icons for home, contacts, weather, launcher and phone settings, each of these having sub-menus.

Home
Shows the time in digital format, emails, text messages and missed calls
Contacts
This is actually called "favourite people" and shows 10 shortcuts to you favourite/mostly dialled people, allowing for photo shortcut, this is something I had on my "OLD" PDA the HTC Hermes, lifted from the Palm Treo 700w
Weather
This is the same as aftermarket software such as SPB Weather and does exactly what is says on the tin, shows todays weather for your chosen location (it even has Derby - Useful only if you live there), clicking again shows the forecast for the next 5 days. Warning : this will use GPRS to update
Launcher
Similar to a start menu, gives you the option of creating shorcuts to your applications and programs,.
Phone Settings
Sound settings, ringtones etc.

All in all I'm very impressed with the device, it's definately a stepup from the Hermes, especially with the buiilt-in GPS which will make it a big seller. The tilting screen is more of a gimmik than useful, but might help in some ways, the keyboard is also improved, the keys are now more repsonsive and you (I) tend to make a lot less spelling mistakes, where you have missed letters out of words.

I've yet to test the GPS /TomTom as people keep calling me, however I'll be installing my aftermarket applications tonight and will update as soon as I can (be arsed).

These are due to replace the V1605 on Vodafone and should be known as the v1615, I guess other providers will follow suit.

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