Gadgetory

hi this is Steve skarlatos with pocketnow.com and today we're going to take a hardware tour of the verizon wireless HTC ovum ozone global smartphone it's a global smartphone because it handles both the cdma ev-do cellular standard as well as the more popular internationally gsm standard it's a quad-band GSM phone so it handles US and European cellular frequencies in its a dual band evdo CDMA device for the US and those countries that have cdma ev-do networks so the device has quite a few keys it's really a hardware Kibum which also acts up to initiate voice control you've got the left softkey home key familiar windows mobile d-pad the right softkey a return key the end call and also that doubles as your power off call we've got a clear T keyboard with a function overlay for numbers locking the device going to vibrate mode the communications manager you can also access your email directly and mute the device so you can see the fact that they put the email key next to the space bar means that this is really a texting messaging device you know it's really designed for email to compete with devices like the blackberry you've got the speaker at the top microphones at the bottom we've got the mini USB connector which requires a dongle to use headphones which is I think really the low point of the device but hopefully HTC will be changed met on their newer devices soon then you also have the volume key on the side here we've got a 2 megapixel camera we've got the speakerphone a speaker here the microphone there if we pull the cover off you've got the microSD card slot which can handle up to 16 gigabyte and if we pull the battery you'll see this is where the gsm card and it comes pre-loaded with a verizon vodafone gsm card so the phones already enabled to work with the gsm network and that's something that i'm curious to see how if it works with an AT&T sim card since I won't be going overseas unfortunately to test the device oh that would be a nice treat it runs out see if we power it on here it runs the windows mobile 6.1 operating system and which gives you you know all the active sync features if you're using exchange email server or you can connect to services like Google Gmail or msn hotmail in comparison to other devices have an old smt 5800 from verizon which was a non-touchscreen device as the ozone is meant for emailing or texting but it has a slideout keyboard the thickness of the device shows because of the slide out keyboard this was a much thicker device although smaller in size but I have to say I really like the wavy ozone feels in my hand or of course we're going to compare it to he iphone although the iphone is a touchscreen device and more of a multimedia device it's about really the same size as the ozone and feels feels the same so if you are looking really for a hard keyboard and you don't need to touch screen functionality the ozone feels pretty good especially when you compare it to like the samsung i760 now this has a touchscreen and this is a corporate workforce it's got the keyboard here but i find this device some in a lot of corporations that i visit then if you compare it to a newer device from verizon like the touch diamond the touch diamond is obviously a touch only there's no keyboard it is thicker the touch diamond i think is meant that to be more of a multimedia device although both are running windows mobile 6.1 you've obviously got a larger screen on the touch the touch diamond so you know for the price difference I mean you really have to take a look if you want the hard keyboard at the HTC ozone on a two-year contract it runs 119 dollars and ninety-nine cents but verizon is currently offering a seventy dollar rebate which brings the price down to 49 99 that's a pretty incredible price for a full-featured small fun so this is definitely a phone to look at especially when you're comparing it to some of the of the blackberries out there I think you get much more value out of the windows mobile platform that you do out a new blackberry platform so that's about it for the hardware tour and I'll be back with my first software tour shortly