HTC Advantage 7501 8 GB Unlocked Smartphone with 3 MP Camera, 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS, MP3/Video Player, MiniSD--U.S. Version with Warranty (Black)

List Price: $999.99

Features:

• This is a quad-band GSM 850/900/1800/1900 cell phone with US 3G compatibility via 850/1900 MHz, and EDGE/UMTS/HSDPA
• 3-megapixel digital camera with autofocus and video capture
• 5-inch LCD touchscreen display and detachable QWERTY keyboard
• Internal 8 GB hard drive; expandable memory via MiniSD card slot
• Bluetooth and Wi-Fi wireless connectivity; built-in GPS navigation

Customer Reviews:

great device [Posted on 2007-12-17]
Been using the advantage for 3 months with Cingular.
Pros
Great for reading news on ride to work (train) love the screen size.
Instant messaging and internet radio also work great.
With 4 gig card you have over 12 gigs memory
Goggle maps looks great on large screen
you can download flash for internet explorer to view flash sites

Cons
Take long time to capture a satellite in Portland Oregon, but its free with Google maps
Works good as phone but it's kind of big, but I can live with that.

I have gotten in the habit of just carrying the unit in my pocket and leaving case and keyboard at home and it works great for me. Love the comments I get at meetings. very fast with cingular 3G.

My laptop is too big and my treo is too small but the HTC Advantage is just right [Posted on 2007-12-24]
If you're not looking to replace a laptop and cell phone entirely than this is a great device. I don't find it too big or bulky to carry around all day (unlike a laptop) and I don't find it at all clumsy or slow to do email, browse the web, or review documents and spreadsheets (unlike my treo). I still use both my treo and my laptop regularly but I am using the Advantage as much as either of the other devices for daily tasks.

The microdrive on the device is frustratingly slow for running programs but a 2GB SD card gives you plenty of room to install programs which then run just fine and the microdrive is perfect for storing all your music and video files.

Battery life is very good although it takes a long time to charge. I leave the device plugged into the AC charger overnight and it is fully charged in the morning and lasts me the whole day.

Are you a "buyer's remorse" kind of shopper...me too! [Posted on 2008-02-05]
...but I gotta tell you: not for one second have I been disappointed in this product. If I lost it I would buy another one tomorrow. I'll spare all the detailed stuff and just say it's great for organizing your business life and the internet surfing is genuinely workable...hook it up to my slingbox and give me some food and throw me on an island for a month and I'd be fine with the HTC Advantage. Buy it immediately instead of spending a month playing the should I or shouldn't I game like me. You'll be glad you did!!... I even find myself posting in product specific forums, I like this thing so much...go for it!

Just the right size, big enough to view documents, not too big or heavy to carry around [Posted on 2008-04-02]
After using the HTC 7501 for about 2 months, this device seems to be quite suited for various work and personal use. Windows Mobile 6 means having the flexibility to customize it with built-in and third party software. See some of my uploaded images to see how much it can be personalized. On the downside, the flexibility implies that you have to experiment and potentially make mistakes that might force you to do a hard reset if you're not careful.

The strong points of the 7501 are the 5" screen (which is relatively large in pda & smart phone terms) given its weight and size, the ability to project through the VGA out, relatively fast boot time (compared to laptops or UMPCs with WinXP/Vista), and versatile information access options (e.g. WiFi, bluetooth, GSM, GPS, etc.). Still & video camera, as well as GSM phone features are nice extras.

The overall size & weight of the material makes it comfortable enough to cradle in the palm of one hand (without the detachable keyboard) and treat it like a mini tablet PC. For occasional e-mail reading/writing and web browsing, carrying the 7501 around is much better than having to lug a relatively bulkier laptop. The detachable keyboard is generally more convenient to use than the standard Windows Mobile entry modes (with the provided stylus): keyboard, block recognizer, letter recognizer, and transcriber. With a third party touch screen input called TouchPal, typing is even easier and faster. Most of the time, I found the latter to be good enough that I don't have to carry the detachable keyboard anymore.

For those using Lotus Notes at work, the built in outlook combined with "mNotes5 for wireless synchronization" (not included) allows immediate access to e-mail, calendar, & tasks as long as you have data access (e.g. via ActiveSync cable, wiFi, a GSM account subscription with a data plan, or a pay-as-you-go GSM SIM card for those quick trips abroad, since the 7501 is unlocked and supports 4 GSM bands and 3 UMTS/HSDPA bands). Not all the Lotus Notes functionality is preserved, but reading & editing e-mail, creating & accepting/rejecting meeting invitations, reading & editing schedule, and reading & editing to do lists can be done. Supposedly, those needing access to company mail using MS Outlook need not even buy any add-ons. Access to gmail, hotmail, etc. also works well. One note of caution, if you use a third party software to shoehorn Lotus Notes into the 7501's outlook, and also synchronize with MS Outlook from the same desktop, be very careful in setting the synchronization & reconciliation options.

For .pdf files, the built-in Acrobat Reader LE works just fine, although there are other third party options such as the free PocketXpdf. The 5" screen is large enough to read & edit MS Word documents (note: certain objects like equations do not show up), view & present MS Powerpoint direct from the device or through a projector, read 2-column documents (e.g. patent applications), and occasional web browsing. There are third party solutions that offer a more complete desktop MS Office-like features & can read, edit & save files in native MS Office format.

As previously mentioned, the 7501 screen can be sent through a VGA out to a projector. For powerpoint presentations, the 7501 can work with bluetooth presentation remote devices. I've tried this using a Sony Ericsson K810i phone that has such a bluetooth presentation controller. The ability to share contents through a projector is a big deal imho, in terms of this being a practical replacement for a travel / meeting laptop.

As a GPS device, the 5" inch screen is quite generous, although the touch screen type makes its maximum brightness pale in comparison to some non-touch screen dedicated GPS devices available. The SiRF III chip is supposedly the latest generation GPS chip. The question is whether or not you get enough satellite visibility when using the GPS. For the US version, teleNav can be used (a subscription type service). I carried over Mapopolis, an old software from my Toshiba e310 (on PPC2003) that works just fine. At the risk of comparing apples to oranges, the computation time for rerouting directions on the 7501 using Mapopolis is considerably faster than the computation time for rerouting using my Garmin Nuvi 660, which in itself is a very nice GPS unit with supposedly the same SiRF III chip. Unfortunately, this mostly means that you need to spend extra to get the GPS software in a 7501 one way or another. There are a few free options (e.g. Nav4All, GoogleMaps) if you have data access / subscription.

Since I don't have unlimited data plan on my SIM card, I prefer to not use the HTC's phone capability for personal use. I've tried it while travelling and it works just fine. It also makes a nice bedside clock that can give you quick access to weather, time, e-mail, & news (via web browser), and it's not too heavy to pick up and use it for half an hour or so. You can do the same with a Mobile Internet Device for less cost and a potentially more refined user interface, but it can't do most of the work-related utility listed above.

very nice [Posted on 2008-05-04]
a little large, but the htc does everything stated and is an awesome machine.i am very pleased. it has good internet with the sims card and is a good phone.

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