The Athena – In the Flesh
Posted on 23 January 2007, at 3:53 pm, by Mitchell Oke
I know this is what Judie and a lot of other people have been waiting for. Actual hands on pictures of the upcoming HTC Athena!
Mobile Life has some nice pictures of the device itself, the display, and the unusual keyboard come screen protector.
While the page is in Taiwanese, the pictures are pretty good, and Google does a reasonable job of translating (it is readable). This is one slick device, both in looks and specs!
[via Pocket PC Thoughts]
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16 Comments For This Post
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January 23rd, 2007 at 5:49 pm
That thing is massive!! Almost the size of a UMPC but with Windows Mobile… I mean errr this one will be an oddity.
January 23rd, 2007 at 6:13 pm
It’s definitely not shirt pocket sized – but it’s not quite as big as I thought it would be, either…
Just as there was a particular market for the HTC Universal, there will be one for the Athena. It will be interesting to see how it does.
January 23rd, 2007 at 8:15 pm
Its gonna be expensive too….
January 23rd, 2007 at 8:32 pm
I won’t be as bad as everyone thinks…but not cheap, either.
January 23rd, 2007 at 10:21 pm
Hope your able to get one when they come out
January 23rd, 2007 at 10:35 pm
((fingers crossed))
January 24th, 2007 at 12:09 am
Don’t leave home without a headset either! Wouldn’t want to get caught speaking into that thing next to my face!
Seriously, the price will have to be aggressively cut because for that size you can have a UMPC. I truly wonder which niche the Athena is aiming for. It looks like a bridge device between a full fledge UMPC and a PDA-first-phone-second designed over enthusiastically.
January 24th, 2007 at 6:02 am
Yeah and with UMPC prices coming down it will have to get even cheaper.
January 24th, 2007 at 6:41 am
I’m not really sure what to think about Athena. On one side it’s Windows Mobile Geek’s dream, with pretty much everything you ever wanted included. But on the other side it’s not all that usable.
- It’s not a usable phone, it’s much too big to be used as a phone, even with BT headset. Universal was allready too clunky as a phone and it’s smaller. And of course the price is way out of reach for pretty much everybody (even the Flame looks affordable compared to Athena)
- It’s not really usable as a PDA. While it is the most full featured PDA ever produced, it’s also the most expensive one, easily beating even iPaqs sold on E-Bay at the peak of iPAQ craze and it’s large for a PDA. Casios were called bricks and they were smaller…
- It can’t compete with UMPCs. Yes it’s smaller than most of them, but it also lacks (VGA only, 8GB only…) much of the features that UMPCs have. Judging by my experience with Universal used as an UMPC, at best Athena can pass as an UMPC replacement for very light work. But the problem is you can get full UMPC capable of real work for less…
- What about using it as an internet browsing tablet (like Nokia 800) or as an multimedia player? Againthe price and the limitations of the platform are makin it non competitive.
As far as I’m concerned Athena is an 2007 version of HPC. Having the same problems as all the other HPCs before it. It’s just either too expensive or too big or both be competitive with pretty much anything.
January 24th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
alese, If I am not mistaken, a firm price hasn’t been released – or has it? I may have missed it.
If you haven’t heard of a firm price, are you going by the $1700 that was bandied about the internet last month? I don’t think that price is correct…
So if price is the major consideration, what would be the right mark for you that would make the Athena a serious contender? Or would it’s size really be the biggest problem, no matter the price?
Just wondering, is all…
)
January 24th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
No the official price hasn’t been set yet, but I’m pretty sure that the rumored $1400-1500 is correct.
Mainly because the Universal was(is) priced at around $900 and the coming O2 Flame is rumored to be $1100, so compared to them $1500 is just right…
And no, the size is not main problem.
My main problem with Athena is that I just don’t see it’s use. Or better yet I don’t think there is much of a market for device like that. Like I said in my previous post, for any use I can think of, I can find cheaper and probably better device.
Oh, but Judie, don’t get me wrong, if it would be like $500 I would buy it just to have it, real use or not…
January 24th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
I would buy it for $750 – $800. Today! Any more…I might wait a day or two.
Which will probably make Jerry say something snotty since he is trying to convince me to buy a camera that costs the same amount – and I am putting it off.
I have priorities!! ha ha.
January 24th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Haha, I think I would have to choose the Athena in that situation
January 25th, 2007 at 9:47 am
500 Euros with a 2 year contract in Germany…
January 25th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
500 EUR with contract is nice, but that’s Germany…
In my country (Slovenia) our biggest operator is still seling HTC Wizard for 500 EUR with contract (1 year) and the Universal is 670 EUR, so when (if) Athena is going to be available here it’s going to be expensive…
January 25th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Oh yah, I’ll be watching eBay prices, myself. I doubt that I can afford one brand new.