Review: HTC Advantage X7510

When I received the HTC Advantage 7510 for review I was a bit confused, was it a phone or was it a UMPC type device, I am still somewhat confused as to where it fits in to everyday life but having said that what a great piece of technology.

It is basically a large screened Pocket PC Professional device just too big to use as a phone but a brilliant Internet tablet and GPS alternative. Read on for the full review.

HTC Advantage X7510 Specifications:-

Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
Intel Bulverde 624 MHz Qualcomm MSM 6275
Flash Disk 16GB
ROM 256MB RAM 128MB SDRAM
Internal GPS antenna
Wireless LAN: WiFi 802.11b/g & Bluetooth 2.0
133.5 (L) x 98 (W) x 16 (T)mm
5” 640×480 VGA resolution Color TFT LCD with LED backlit Touch Screen

Externally

Starting with the outside of the device, looking face on we have the glorious 5″ VGA (640 x 480) touch screen complete with front facing video camera and a home button.

The right hand side has a quick launch camera button, access to the stylus which is a solid clear plastic stylus and the power on / off button.

The left hand side has the mini USB charging / sync port, VGA Out for connecting to external monitors, projectors etc, a 3.5mm headphone socket and the volume up and down buttons.

The back of the device is pretty sparse, just housing the 3 Mpx camera lense with auto focus and led flash.

The bottom of the X7510 has access to the battery compartments, mini SD card slot and Sim Card slot and the contacts you can see are for the detachable magnetic keyboard.

The size of this device is it’s greatest asset and also it’s weakest, looking at it as a PDA it is as near perfect as it gets, as a phone it is just way too big, look at it below compared with the iPhone 3G it looks huge in comparison.

The video below gives you a quick tour round the device from the outside.

Internally

Windows Mobile is a quirky operating system, it was designed to be manipulated with a stylus, times have changed and manufacturers are currently trying to make Windows Mobile devices work by touch alone and for me it is just not working. The main reason is the touch screens are just too small to allow fast accurate touch interaction, the HTC X7510 proves this point very well, why you might ask, well it works as a Touch device brilliantly and it is all down to the large 5″ VGA screen. It allows mistakes, it is tolerant of clumsy fingers, it has much more room for error over the usual 2.8″ screens found on other Windows Mobile devices. This is why I like the X7510 so much.

Software wise the phone has the usual Windows Mobile 6.1 set up, Office Mobile with Word, Excel and Powerpoint, one thing to note creating new word documents you can only save it in the latest docx format so if you email them to others make sure they can open them.

The major plus point of this device is Opera 9.5, this runs so well on the X7510’s big screen it has made me leave my iPhone 3G browser alone for a few days, no it is not as easy to operate with touch but it is not too far away and web pages just look perfect on the large screen. It loads pages very quickly and renders them dare I say it better than the iPhone showing animated gif’s with ease where the iPhone only shows blank boxes. The web surfing experience is fantastic full stop.

Other software worth a mention is the assisted GPS, again this is a common feature on connected devices with GPS as it enables you to quickly get a fix on satellite positions are start navigating. I tested it with google maps and it worked fine acquiring a fix in around 20 seconds, and again looked amazing on the 5″ screen this could easily be a fantastic GPS solution with the right software.

The Camera application is again pretty standard and the whole 5″ screen becomes the viewfinder when you run the application which gives you a great look at what you are about to shoot, I found the camera to produce pretty good photographs, a couple are posted below at full resolution to compare.

Jetcet WiFi printing, wow this worked really well and was so easy to get going, I have a HP printer on my network and using the pre-installed network printer application I was easily able to connect to it and print directly from the device over WiFi which was very handy to have.

VGA out is another very handy feature built in and I think this could be very handy for people on the road who give presentations, plug the X7510 into a projector or external monitor and you have full presentation capabilities, very clever.

Battery life was great and with light use it is still going strong two days after the first charge with 65% remaining another plus for this device.

Video below takes a quick look at the device on the software side.

Conclusion

The X7510 is a brilliant bit of tech, I loved it and found loads of uses for it, the downside though again is it’s size, I couldn’t use it as a phone, its too big but I could use it as a laptop alternative for
a lot of my time, surfing web pages, blog posting, Skype calls, email, it does it all perfectly and very quickly, throw into the mix instant turn on, 16 gigs of storage (usb storage too) and this has to be the perfect Windows Mobile device when you don’t want or need a laptop.

Think tiny UMPC rather than converged device and you are looking at it in the right light, if your looking for a smart phone I don’t think this is for you unless you are ultra geeky and don’t mind holding a huge phone to your ear and letting everyone hear your conversations or don’t mind using a Bluetooth headset all the time.

Positives

Amazing Screen

Battery Life

Web browsing

WiFi printing

VGA Out

Clip on haptic feedback keyboard

Negatives

Size

No accelerometer

Weight

Box Contents