On Wednesday, 13th May 2009 at 00:08:00 (GMT -0800), Michael S. Hart wrote:
http://www.mobile-review.com/pda/review/htc-advantage-en.shtml http://aboq.org/athena/Ebook_on_HTC_Advantage_7500.jpg
Any mention of prices on thee HTC phones???
I think I saw a list price of $899, but it did NOT show up when I went thru the link, then found these and I am NOT sure they are for THIS. Dell Home $494.99 / Buy.com $508.08 / CDW.com $603.99 / Unbeatable Sale $672.50
There are lots of different kinds of HTC phones. (And the Google phone with the Android OS is [going to be] manufactured in cooperation with HTC.) I purposefully went for the largest HTC phone, because I'm an e-book fanatic and to me, the 5-inch screen was top priority. This was my dealer: http://www.ebuy.sk/HTC-X7510-Advantage,841.html The price (minus local VAT) is 669 EUR = $915, so a list price of $899 sounds about right. But the special offers might be legitimate, too. (Note that the dealer now sells the updated model, HTC Advantage 7510. However, the update went wrong, IMO, as in a silly attempt to copycat the iPhone, HTC got rid of most of the hardware buttons of the original HTC Advantage 7500 model.) Anyway, most people would probably find a phone of these dimensions (5-inch screen) too large. It doesn't really fit into your shirt pocket. So, there are smaller, slicker models. The lower the resolution, the lower the price -- but also, the lower the enjoyment of reading e-books! Here are 3 other HTC phones: * HTC Touch HD: gorgeous 3.8 inch screen, resoluton of 480 x 800 pixels, that's even *more* than VGA -- but: the letters are necessarily somewhat smaller than on a 5-inch screen device. Still perfectly legible, though. (I tested this one first-hand.) The price (without VAT) is around 490 EUR = $670: http://www.alza.sk/htc-touch-hd-blackstone-cz-d107046.htm * HTC Touch Pro: would not recommend this one; more expensive than the Touch HD model, yet the screen is a full inch smaller, even though it sports the VGA resolution, too. The price (excl. VAT) is about 510 EUR = $700: http://www.alza.sk/htc-touch-pro-raphael-d100466.htm Now, it makes a *lot* of difference if you view the same VGA screen (640 x 480 pixels) on a device with a 5-inch screen or on one with a 2.8" screen! On the latter, the fonts will be minuscule. Naturally, you can enlarge the font in your e-book reader, but that makes a 700-pages novel out of a 350-pages novel... * HTC Touch 3G: a traditional phone, meaning it comes with a 2.8-inch screen with the QVGA resolution, that's one half of VGA = 240 x 320 pixels, so that the letters in e-books are nice and large, but again, you get to read a 700-pages novel instead of 350 pages. ;-) The price (excl. VAT) is about 325 EUR = $445: http://www.alza.sk/htc-touch-3g-jade-modry-d104503.htm QVGA is the standard for traditional PDAs (= pocket PCs that are no phones), and I used to read lots of e-books on my previous two PDAs with QVGA, but I confess the frequent turning of pages does not really make the reading as pleasant as enjoying books on paper. The real breakthrough for me, therefore, was the VGA resolution of 640 x 480 pixels; it was at *this* point I could finally say that reading e-books started to be as pleasant as reading books on paper, and a thousand times more practical (due to the possibility to make highlights and annotations of unlimited length right inside the books, and utilize them later on the desktop PC). So, here's why I wouldn't buy an iPhone: its resolution is smaller than VGA. And that does not seem to me to be quite enough for optimal e-book enjoyment. I'd call VGA (640 x 480 pixels) the minimal threshold. And here's why I wouldn't buy a Kindle: no lit background! You can't read in bed in complete darkness, which would be a terrible nuisance to me. Also, you can't choose to read white on black, as I do. I believe it's been scientifically confirmed that human eyes get less tired when they read white on black instead of black on white. Black letters on a white background indeed produces a *glare*. (Or if there's no glare, deciphering black-on-white letters is alleged to produce more eye-strain than deciphering white-on-black letters.) With white letters on a black background, there's no (noticeable) glare at all! -- Yours, Alex. www.aboq.org [processed by "The Bat!", Version 3.80.06]