HTC announces HTC S743: U.S. edition, suckaz
Not forgetting about those ever-important arrogant American consumers, HTC has crafted a U.S.-specific version of their HTC S740 Windows Mobile Standard device. Supporting 850MHz/1900MHz HSDPA bands (sorry, T-Mo users), they’re taking the independent distribution route and going with places like Dell.com, CDW, Best Buy, and others, to sell the handset. All we’ve got on a release date is Q1 of this year, and while we weren’t given a price, you can most likely expect this to sell at the higher-end of the spectrum as it’s not carrier-subsidized. Anywhere from $450-$550 would be our guess.
Excellent.
What, Boy Genius Report, is so arrogant about the large percentage of Americans for whom touchscreens and predictive text are rather useless. If you are an entrepreneur, as I am, or work in the corporate world, touchscreens aren’t exactly useful for heavy e-mail and text-messaging. And if you are a heavy text-message-type, the physical keyboard is far more useful than a touchscreen.
HTC is merely catering to a large segment of the cell-phone buyers who aren’t impressed by the Touch, the iPhone or the Blackberry Storm. And I expect that in other countries, the desire for a physical QWERTY keyboard is just as strong as in this one.
$450-550 would be your guess?
HTC Touch Pro/Fuze on AT&T is $500 without a contract.
HTC Touch Diamond is $700 at Best Buy unlocked.
How on earth would this be $450-550 at a store like Best Buy when the Diamond is so much more expensive? Is this phone a lot crappier or lack in features compared to the Diamond? The fact that it has a keyboard to me would mean the physical cost to make would be more expensive since it has more parts… but what do I know, I’m just an arrogant American consumer.
Or they could give us what we actually want: A phone with a decent sized screen (e.g. touch HD).
Small screen = fail
@Sevenmack, why would anyone, besides a plumber, do heavy messaging from the phone? In corporate world, there are things called “computers” for it. BlackBerry and such are for the one-off situations when you are picking up lunch or commuting to work on a train.
^Why bother blathering on about something you obviously are not familiar? Are you in the legal, medical, distribution or any other field requiring its people to work from outside the cubicle you are clearly familiar with?
Sevenmack is a tupperware baller living in his moms house with a kia spectra on dubs.
Actually, j, I’ve just finished a meeting with one of my consulting clients and getting work on my weekly column on public education. I own my house (which I did buy from my dear departed grandfather a year before he died; he needed the money and I needed a place). And my black Kia is nice, shiny and ready for tomorrow’s trip into the Beltway.
And MiniMe, there are professions such as doctors, lawyers, consultants, even think tank wonks, who spend more time on the road and out of an office than in one. You can’t always whip out the laptop when you need to dash off an e-mail response to a client paying you five large monthly.
@backbeat,
I haven’t seen a quality email coming from the BlackBerry. I have hard time believing that legal representative will spend valuable time trying to punch a full-blown text email on their blackberries. Those who do a lot of texting usually get a wireless card installed on their laptops to have the convenience (and quality) of emails se=nt from a normal account. It was cool to reach out to your pocket every 2 minutes and start punching an email away back in 2000. Now, besides plumbers and delivery guys (who don’t require to send thought-through emails to the client) only fresh graduates use BBs extensively.
^ What back-woods part of the world are you in where everyone (everyone but plumbers and delivery guys, apparently
) carries a laptop in their pocket?
@ MiniMe,
I’m a BES admin (well, it’s one part of my job) for a company that contracts with most of the auto industry (GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota etc.) EVERY single one of my plant managers has a BlackBerry. The systems here are mostly automated and robotic (thankfully NOT part of my job
) and whenever there’s a system event (faults, warnings, etc) it blasts out an email to the appropriate managers. They coordinate their actions, and those of their employees, using email and voice calling from their Berries.
You obviously have NO IDEA how the world uses BlackBerries (and iPhones, and HTC devices, and any mobile emai ldevice,) so STFU and sit down in your cubicle, peon.
Yeah, I was going to say there’s no way RIM has so many subscribers, many of them being corporate execs and whatnot, because it’s “convenient.” BB users, both new grads and corporate CEOs/plant managers, have them for their keyboards!! Why else would it take BB to make a Storm, only to “screw it up” according to some BB fanboys?
Still not a world-phone without 2100MHz.
Why is it that every phone that is released with “USA 3G” has to have AT&T 3G and not T-Mobile? I really wish AT&T wouldn’t have monopolized the 3G market its soooo irritating! They need a quad-band umts chip just like the quad band gsm chip!! is that rally too much to ask? 850/1900/1700/2100 wouldn’t that be BOMB!
I am glad to see this sort of device coming out. I am a fan of both HTC devices and Windows Mobile but have been discouraged by the lack of Windows Mobile Standard offerings.
I don’t want a touch screen. I have tried the Tilt and the Fuze and could get an iPhone (through work) if I wanted one but I don’t.
I don’t get the attraction of touchscreen phones, you can’t easily dial them without looking at it which I find a big loss of functionality.
I wish the S743 was carrier subsidized, Verizon has a CDMA version of it and it is a pretty nice phone but I am not switching to Verizon.
Verizon has a CDMA version of this? Not on their website. Where is that available?
thanks
^ Verizon doesn’t have any version of the 740/743.