Gadgetory

hi this is Adam Lane with pocketnow.com we've got a special throwback for you today now this is one of HTC's first iphone clones may have heard about how Apple is suing HTC about patent infringement now this device came out in 2003 I bought it from a guy in Dubai because that was the only place to get it at the time so come on let's check it out oh what was that you said the iPhone wasn't reached until 2007 and here is the HTC Himalaya this was released in September of 2003 also known as the I'm 8 Pocket PC phone Edition and here we've got a 3.5 inch screen you know very large compared to may of the devices from just a few years ago we have hardware buttons at the top those can be assigned to whatever application you want here's your speaker you have a five way directional pad a very nice feel to it with the action button in the middle and you have your call send and end buttons as well as a microphone down here the screen is inset so you got a little bezel there at the top we have our power button LED indicator light infrared port yeah you guys probably don't even know what that is and a full SD card slot over here we've got the stylus silo this is very hefty stylus nice fit the bottom is your sink port it's a proprietary and a little rubber flap covering a 2.5 millimeter headset jack back when you know those were popular over here we have a reset button and then up here we have a couple more customizable buttons this one is a voice recorder this is volume up and down and this is for the camera and on the back we have a VGA camera this is their mirror so you can see yourself and this is a antenna extender you got a little rubber thing covering that and here's a battery cover latch so you press the little button that comes to off of a battery there's another latch to our release the battery and here it's an expansion port there was an accessory you could get to replace the battery cover that also allowed you vga output to a projector so if you wanted to show some PowerPoint presentations now originally this came with Windows Mobile 2003 but it's since been upgraded to Windows Mobile 5 so let's take a look at that when does mobile 5 introduced our soft key menus at the bottom and we've got our Start menu see the today's screen looks pretty familiar to Windows Mobile 6 and 6.1 and you know you got your date and everything calendar that's all customizable just as it always was we have our Start menu same as everything camera see how that works just fine and file explorer of course you can see how quick this is pretty easy to browse and let's just where do we have we got a video here check out that video quality really nice actually you gotta consider that this is this phone was made during a time when Apple was making iPods with grayscale screens a little hardware clicker buttons we've got a phone really nice video coffee in addition while this is Windows Media Player so of course it syncs with your desktop computer for mp3 files you got your big SD slot so plenty of music we've also got Internet Explorer and if I can press it say got a full HTML browser again at a time when nothing else was really capable of doing this you've got notes of course voice recording exchange push syncing tasks PowerPoint Office Mobile looks pretty much the same as it always has games bubble breaker and solitaire array messaging of course we got outlook calendar and there's the phone dialer now this was actually the first Pocket PC phone that doesn't have an antenna sticking out it's an internal antenna there's also the first Pocket PC phone with Bluetooth support you see my Bluetooth light blinking over here so that meant you could use a Bluetooth headset and you could also use a Bluetooth GPS so you can get your GPS navigation instructions using any and indeed you know half dozen GPS programs that were around at the time so you could hear your voice prompting navigation instructions and have your Bluetooth headset for making phone calls while also listening to music through Windows Media Player all at the same time now back in 2003 here's another thing I want to show you for the Himalaya this is the dock that's what it came with and this goes plugs into USB and we have a nice little cradle for it but we also have a battery charger so there's the cradle and we also have a microphone for speaker this is a little light indicator for the secondary battery for one last charging so you could you know use up your battery here swap it into the fresh battery real easily really a great innovative pocket pc phone from 2003 that's it for now