HTC Athena previewed in pics

If that last round of HTC Athena pics didn't quench your thirst for all things shiny and detachable, you may want to head over to the blog of one Lucretius, who's managed to get his hands on one of the coveted devices and snap shots of every nook and cranny of it. For those that don't have the specs memorized yet, the device itself packs a 5-inch VGA touchscreen, Intel Bulverde PXA270 624 Mhz chipset, integrated GPS receiver, an 8GB hard drive, a 3 megapixel digital camera and, of course, that detachable QWERTY keyboard on display above, among other goodies. While Lucretius doesn't provide a full review of the device, he does mention that it has "impressive" battery life and that the VGA screen is "amazing." Check out a couple more pics of it after the break, the click through for the full spread.

[Tom Brennan @ Feb 1st 2007 3:19PM]

Dang it. I just bought a Sony Ereader! -It's okay -it's on the way -should be easy to prove what a colossal idiot I am and return it.
One picture of Athena should do it. -me want me want

[alexkaiserwilhelm @ Jan 31st 2007 3:16PM]

Um. Wow. The promise of the UMPC, wrapped up into this. Well see.

Alex

[Jesse S @ Jan 31st 2007 3:52PM]

Wow, hopefully it comes to the USA. It would be amazing if it went CDMA and EVDO rev.A on Verizon or Sprint...

[Lee Gibson @ Jan 31st 2007 4:18PM]

All it needs is to not be Windows Mobile, and it might be worth a look.

[dave @ Jan 31st 2007 5:03PM]

unfortunately, jesse, the athena is a GSM device, but nothing's stopping HTC (or any OEM really) from making a CDMA device similar to it.



but the wonder of it all is the fact that the screen is full VGA res....which is double my current PDA and a whopping four times that of my current phone!

unfortunately, i can't imagine this thing would be very pocketable, and for the money it's gonna cost, we're better off begging OQO for a power vision-enabled version of the 02.

[Stephen Yuan @ Jan 31st 2007 5:45PM]

First of all, I think this thing's PRETTY awsome. However, I think it will do better with a 8gb flesh drive, or SSD since HDD Palm sucked ass. Moving on to second flaws, I think they can do better in terms of interface design. I don't about anybody else, but I happened to notice that when the device is closed, aka having the keyboard covering the monitor, it still got a tiny bit of the screen visible. That tiny bit of screen can be used for "gadget" like features...like time, mail, weather, etc.

[Babau @ Jan 31st 2007 7:03PM]

Um, that bit of screen already is used for notifcation messages. You can clearly see in the image that it's displaying M1-3GSM, indicating what network it's connected to. There's also some blurry icons over on the right that probably indicate something.

[jinmen @ Jan 31st 2007 8:34PM]

It costs around USD1200, or NTD39800. (NTD stands for New Taiwan Dollar)

[James @ Feb 1st 2007 3:46PM]

@Jin: ouch, that's steep. I could buy a pretty sweet ultraportable full-blown laptop for that and have change to get a year or two of phone service.

As for the "notification area" -- I hope the case is at least able to close all the way; after owning a GBA SP I'm in love with "clamshell" gadgets, since you can pocket them without risking screen damage (if they're made right).