A first look at the HTC Shift

HTC Shift

We first heard about the HTC Shift UMPC back in March. It also made an appearance at the Intel Developer Conference in April. And now it has resurfaced over at GottaBeMobile.com and Hugo Ortega was able to play with one for a few days.

The HTC Shift will be able to run both Windows Vista Business and Windows Mobile 6, letting the user switch between the two thanks to its secondary processor and memory. For Vista, the Shift will use the Intel Ultra Mobile Platform 2007, featuring an 800MHz Intel Santa Rosa A110 processor, 1GB RAM, and a 7-inch widescreen display (1024×768 resolution) that slides and tilts out to sit above the keyboard. Switching to Windows Mobile, the Shift will use a 400 MHz Qualcomm processor, 64MB RAM and 128MB ROM, and a VGA resolution.

The Shift will also come with quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and tri-Band UMTS/HSDPA, a 40GB hard drive (HTC specs show 30GB though), 802.11 g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, a 1.3MP camera, an SD card slot, and a biometric finger scanner.

By running Windows Mobile when you don’t need the full functionality of Vista, you greatly extend your battery life. While running Vista, you might get up to 3 hours of battery life. In Windows Mobile mode, that jumps to to 6 or 7 days.

There are no details yet on pricing and availability.

Read more about this story