Verizon Wireless' new HTC Imagio
OK, here’s the deal. I was originally gonna call this “HTC Imagio versus Apple’s 3GS iPhone” or “HTC Imagio versus the Blackberry Storm”, but I decided not to do a head-to-head with the others – mainly because I didn’t have access to the other two today (friends and family with them are out of town). So, you’ll just have to relax and enjoy my small write-up on the HTC Imagio by itself…
My first impression after using it for a day? I like it. It’s a little bigger than an iPhone, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing at 4.65″ x 2.43″ x 0.55″. The screen is 480×800 pixels [edit: HTC's site says that this phone is a 3.6”, 480 x 800, 262K-color TFT LCD, touch screen] so you can watch movies in a higher resolution on your phone. So those long airplane trips won’t hurt your eyes quite as much as the smaller screened iPhone (or iPod). And it has a kickstand (how funny is that? “Oh yeah? Well, my phone has a kickstand!”) – so you can set it on your desk with the kickstand up and watch movies you’ve installed, OR watch TV (Verizon offers a service where you can get certain TV channels, including Nickelodeon and ESPN, to name a few, streamed right on your phone).
I’m coming out of a Verizon xv6800, with slide-out keyboard, so I thought I would have a lot of issues with a touch screen keyboard. But, so far, I’ve been quite surprised with how easy it is to work with – even with the phone standing upright with one hand, I can actually type faster with one hand than I could with one hand on the old keyboard.
It’s Windows Mobile, so it’s not perfect (but neither is the iPhone or Blackberry), but with 6.5 I’ve noticed a few of the quirks that were in 6.0 (and 6.1) are gone. It does multi-task pretty well, which I like. This is probably an HTC Imagio thing, but I am so glad they changed the start menu to a full screen where you can choose things a little easier. My XV6800 had a lot of extra buttons on the outside that I used often to navigate around the OS interface – and I still feel like I need them, but I’m quickly finding that with this sleeker interface that I do not. One thing I do not like as much is how the interface gives you a choice to view a few things first, but then you have to choose to view everything – it’s kinda like layering. It gets a little confusing at first, but I’m getting used to it.
A few more quick cool things: The HTC Imagio has FM radio (much like the Zune). I honestly don’t care too much for FM radio after having XM radio for so long, but this is something I actually enjoy having an option of. It has GPS. OK, so did my XV6800, but I’m also glad the Imagio does as well, since finding out where you are and getting to where you want to be is always important. It does leveling like the iPhone (a fun little game called “Teeter” comes with the phone).
It also has a Calender, Stocks, Mail (you can sync it up with your Outlook), YouTube, etc. I’m pretty sure it has most everything the iPhone has, but again – I can’t compare the two, as I don’t have an iPhone beside me to compare it with.
But my favorite thing about Verizon Wireless’ HTC Imagio, besides the really big screen, is the 5MP pictures and the 640×480 video, which I can record in either MPEG4, H.263, H.264, or 3GGP2 (edit: only 3GGP2 and MPEG4 can do VGA 640×480. Both H.264 and H.263 are limited to CIF 352×288 for some reason). The pictures I can set the ISO by hand (100 to 800) or leave it in auto (100 to 400). I can also choose what I want to be in focus by touching the object on the screen. It’s not all in focus, like many other cell phones (so I can have at least a little DOF!). The video is really nice as well – the 640×480 looks good. I just wished they’d have allowed for a widescreen video option as well (they do give the option of widescreen vs regular pictures, btw). That would have been perfect. Overall, my intial thoughts are that the pictures are good – and the low light shots turned out much better (albeit much noisier) than I thought they would have. The nice thing about 5MP is that you can always shrink it down, if needed, to hide that noise. Almost forgot – it has a timestamp option. I usually don’t allow a camera to put timestamps on my pictures, but I had it on today, just for kicks.
Update 10/09/09 @ 8:30AM: After playing with the phone and JPEGs a little more this morning, I’ve found the 5MP images are always slightly sharpened – even at it’s lowest sharpening setting (which you’ll want to make sure you have the camera set to). They’ve most likely implemented this to deal with the tiny lens on the front, which is going to produce a soft image, especially in large images, due to its small size. Since it’s just a phone, it’s definitely not a show-stopper, or even a bump in the road – just something to keep in mind when you go on vacation and are deciding between your 10MP DSLR and your easy to carry 5MP pocket phone.
Speaking of image sharpening, it has a large selection of Advanced Settings for the camera, including ISO (100 – 800); Quality (resulting in bigger/smaller sized pics); Contrast; Saturation; Sharpness; Effect (Sepia, Grayscale, Negative); Metering Mode (to set where you want it to read the light from – meaning, so long over exposed pictures!); and Flicker Adjustment (for if you are shooting in countries with 50Hz electric – meaning Europe – or if you’re shooting in countries with 60Hz electric – meaning North America). And, there are still other options.
And after reading all this, you may be thinking, “What’s this got to do with film?” Well, it’s a phone that does video, 5MP pictures, and you can use it to show off your film and commercial work (and any other work) quite nicely. I think it’s a great tool to help in your film business, much like the iPhone and Blackberry before it…
BTW: I am just a customer and won’t be getting anything from Verizon for talking about their phone.
Night College Construction
Quickly snapped this one after teaching class tonight. Was talking with someone and snapped the shot to see how well the camera could take a pic at night under weird lighting. You can’t see it, and maybe I’ll post a more detailed pic later, but there’s a lot of noise in both of the darker shots.
Day Shot - the Boys at Breakfast
Day Shot – the Boys at Breakfast. Although it looks very well lit in the shot, it’s really not as bright as you’d think.
Night Living Room
I snapped another pic of my Living Room. It’s very dark over there… As stated above, you can’t see the noise in these lower resolution pictures (couldn’t upload the full 5MP files – they were just too big for a webpage), but I’ll try to post a more detailed pic later.
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