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Rant: Re-thinking the HTC Shift

By: , IntoMobile
Thursday, February 10th, 2011 at 2:06 AM

Remember the HTC Shift, that 7-inch tablet computer with full QWERTY keyboard? It had 2 big problems – price and performance. The hardware just couldn’t keep up with Windows, it was expensive and I doubt the Taiwanese company managed to move enough units (whatever “enough” means). Now may be the time to re-think the Shift and launch it as an Android-powered device.

Think about it. We’ve already seen quite a few pretty similar tablet products. By the end of this year, we’ll be picking the brand and design — the hardware will be almost identical. I would expect that every major handset and computer maker offers both a 7 and 10-inch version of a tablet computer. At some point, all of them will run Honeycomb with eventually some branded UI on top of it. RIM and HP will have tablet products running their respective platforms.

I’m not sure a slightly changed UI is a good enough differentiator — it is said that HTC’s Sense UI stands apart from the competition — but smartphones made by LG, Samsung and Motorola are also selling well.

Plus, some of us could use a keyboard in addition to touchscreen. And I’m not talking about regular netbooks turned smartbooks – those suck, or at least I don’t see a point of such products. Rather, I’m talking about something lighter, something with a 7 perhaps 10-inch screen with useful keyboard, which could be semi-foldable if needed.

In fact, just making the thinner Android-powered version of the HTC Shift could be enough. Of course, the price should be reasonable, too.

Now that I’m thinking, this is something Nokia could do as well. If they and Intel want to impress the world with MeeGo, they better put it on some cool devices. Personally I would be interested in an HTC Shift-kind of tablet. What do you think? Would you grab such a device?

About The Author

Dusan Belic

Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical thing to do. He thinks that using a smartphone is what everyone who cares about their time should do. In addition to his interests in mobile phones, Dusan also loves to experiment with the latest web and mobile 2.0 services. The idea of accessing and managing your information from any device no matter where you are simply amazes him. Whether it's an online to-do list, note taking service or a video sharing social network, he's there to try it out. He admits though, he's still searching for the ultimate web-based organizational tool, which "sings" perfectly with the mobile PIM application. Dusan used to run SymbianWatch.com which later became part of IntoMobile. He lives in Serbia, South-East Europe, from where he edits the site on a daily basis.

  • Noel69

    Infact i think HTC shud revive this tab make it thinner and ofcuz run Honeycomb on it. This again just shows HTC has always been ahead of the Mobile Devices tech innovatoin curve. They produced touch screen devices way b4 Apple took the tech and made it hip w/ the iPhone. The HTC SHIFT also shows they were into Tabs b4 Apple again took the tech and made it hip w/ the iPad. I think what HTC lacked then was a good OS to match the hardwares they had then. HTC shud release a modified thinner version of the SHIFT and also one that is solely w/out the slide keypad. At this point any tab that is released by HTC MUST BE DUAL-CORE or more cores (tri or Quad cores)…all the compitition has dual core tabs floating around. No single core tabs from HTC as rumoured, that will equal fail. And make sure battery is 6000 mAh range.