HTC Pharos - old-timer processor

Introduction, packaging

Pharos... even its name makes us smile. We are used to HTC giving strange names to its devices, and we remember the highly acclaimed TyTN, which has been called as tintin, titan and titin too. There are no such “issues” with the subject of our current review, it might only make us think of Egypt. That’s why we’re smiling.

I have first met the handset in Barcelona, this was the big news at the manufacturer’s modest stand, even though it doesn’t bring about anything new either in its specs or any other aspect. On the other hand we can think about it as a kind of retro-stuff, as if it was a nicely restored old-timer car, which has a real feeling to have. But unfortunately Pharos is no car, but a PDA. And no one likes slow CPUs and outdated features in these devices. Mostly not at such a price.

The sample device provided by SpeedShop, came in the usual stylish box, the Taiwanese company seems to want to make HTC a premium brand. The list of accessories is the usual, we find a sync cable, a charger, a stereo headset and a leather case besides the device.

Exterior

Judging only by its exterior finish we can say that Pharos is a nice PDA. If we also know its features, then we would rather be calling it a fashion-PDA, which notion doesn’t exist by the way, or at least it didn’t exist until now, but it’s highly acceptable in this case. The front is made of soft, silky plastic, the sides have a metallic effect, and even the smallest parts are at their place, so the general impression is positive.

We can find the speaker on the top, the status LEDs are hidden behind it. The high-quality 2.8” QVGA display is below this, while the controls are in the bottom part. These also have a cool design, the call handling buttons are surrounded by the software keys and the Windows and OK buttons. The circle-shaped d-pad, which also functions as a scrolling wheel, is in the center.

5-way d-pad and scroll wheel in one

The back cover has a minimalistic style; there is not even a logo on it. This deserted landscape is broken only by the 2 megapixel, fixed-focus camera and the mirror used for making self-portraits.

We can find the power button on top of the device, while the large volume control keys are on the left.

The bottom part contains the place for fastening the wrist band, the HTC ExtUSB port and the microphone. On the right side we can only see the camera’s exposure button.

Interior, operating system

Pharos uses the well-known Windows Mobile 6 Professional OS, which is extended by HTC with the TouchFLO user interface. The processor is a 200 MHz TI OMAP 850, which can be familiar from Touch for example, so we already know that it can run this system, but it’s still quite slow. Programs usually need a couple of seconds to start up, which will mostly be annoying for those who have been using a handheld with a faster CPU. Fortunately there is no problem with the size of the memory, as the PDA has 256 MB of ROM, of which 120 MB is user space. We have 77 MB for running programs, the rest of the 128 MB RAM is used by pre-installed software. The SDHC-compatible microSD expansion slot is under the back cover.

Pocket PC Mark yielded results appropriate for the hardware specs. File system mark is much improved compared to Touch, while the results of the graphical test have improved about 15 %.

TouchFLO, software

Aside from the rotatable virtual cube, we have all TouchFLO features, but the 3D treat seems to be a specific of the Touch series. So there is an HTC Today plugin with the usual icons and functions. Touching the icons on the left side we can see the current time, date and missed events. The next one is a speed dial interface, the central logo (the one with a small sun) takes us to the weather forecast, this is followed by the application quickstart interface, and the profile chooser is the last one in the row.

Touching one of the icons on the taskbar a window pops up, on which the icons are larger: this makes a stylus-free use easier, just like the scrolling routine does, which is now part of the features. We have a task manager too, so we don’t have to install separate software to make the X button really close running applications. We can even make the Start menu larger if we want to.

There is not much extra in the list of programs. QuickGPS provides faster geo-location, while the functions of Yahoo! Go, RSS Hub and Zip are quite self-explanatory. Comm Manager has nothing new, it’s easy to use as always.

This is the first device where I have met OneNote Mobile, which is the latest member of the Office Mobile family. It’s practically a very basic Word, and it doesn’t even replace Note, that is pre-installed on Pocket PCs, as we cannot draw with it.

Phone calls, data transfer

During calls I only had problem with the volume, as no matter how much I have been tinkering with the slider, I have always felt it as loud as before, I even had to keep the handset a bit away from my ears, when in a silent environment. There couldn’t even have been any other problems, as Pharos doesn’t support third generation mobile networks.

The dial screen also has HTC design. The capacity of the phonebook is only limited by the size of free memory; we can add loads of additional entries to contacts. Messages are handled by Outlook, MMS is supported, and the e-mail client can handle attachments and authenticated IMAP servers too. We can use any MP3 file as a ringtone; we can even edit these files. Profiles are supported as well as ringing and vibration at the same time.

The GSM module is quad-banded (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), the fastest available data transfer protocol is EDGE. Bluetooth has version 2.0 and unfortunately there is no WiFi, so Pharos is a no-go for net addicts.

Multimedia

The camera is a 2 megapixel one, with fixed focus. We can make macro photos, as the lens can be manually rotated to a different position, where the focal distance is quite short, pictures become sharp from a distance of about 10 cm. The switch is very dumbly placed; it’s on the “objective”, so we have to touch the lens itself when switching to macro mode, so there is lots of cleaning to be done.

The software has nice features and exposure is fast too. We can set white balance, light measuring, jpeg-compression and we can put timestamps on the pictures. There are no effects, but the delayed timer and exposure correction are included, the latter can be set in a +/- 2 range.

The picture viewer called Camera Album is also included in the software pack. It still looks very stylish and it still proves that a multi-touch display is not necessarily required to have the functions from iPhone, although it’s true that the HTC application doesn’t provide the same experience as Apple’s solution. We can rotate and zoom pictures with our fingers, but zooming is a bit slow due to the CPU, but one can get used to it.

Our music tracks our played back by Audio Manager. It’s spectacular, it’s easy to use, we can filter tracks by artist, album and genre, it supports playlists, but there’s not equalizer. The included headset is of medium quality, sound is slightly distorted when played through the loudspeaker. Due to the ExtUSB port we have to use a converter in order to use an own headset, but those who have a stereo Bluetooth headset can be happy, as Pharos supports stereo Bluetooth (A2DP).

Because of the low performance of the OMAP chip, we cannot play back PC-optimized movies, so we have to convert them first, as movies with a lower bitrate can be viewed.

GPS, battery, summary

The built-in GPS receiver performed well, it found the satellites pretty fast and it didn’t loose connection if there was no real reason for it. On the software side we can use the pre-installed TomTom Navigator, but we can only download a single map file to this. I’d rather choose iGO, it ran on Pharos, though it wasn’t really fast.

The battery has a capacity of 1100mAh. Thanks to the low-consumption CPU, I managed to use the PDA for 3 days without problems.

Summary: Pharos didn’t convince me at all. There is a PDA with a cool exterior, it even has a GPS receiver, which would be basically good, but this is only a half-solution, as the slow processor cannot run navigation software as it should. In terms of data communication it performs very poorly, but there is the TouchFLO interface as a positive aspect, as well as the 128 MB of RAM. The current price for this is about 515 EUR, which is a bit rough, as we can get HP iPAQ 614c for less and it knows much more than Pharos. And if you’d like a TouchFLO device at all costs, than add another €320 and get a Touch Cruise-t.

Bocha

Translated by Szaszati

The sample device has been provided by www.speedshop.hu, thanks. To access the shop, please click here.

Specifications

HTC Pharos (P3470)
	Technology	GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
	Operating system	Windows Mobile 6 Professional
	Size	58.3 x 108 x 15.7 mm
	Weight	122 grams
	Processor	200 MHz TI OMAP 850
	ROM/RAM	256 / 128 MB (120 / 77 MB free to use)
	Display	2.8” diagonal, 240 x 320 pixel resolution, 16 bit color depth touchscreen
	Expandability	microSD (SDHC-compatible)
	WiFi	none
	Infra / Bluetooth	present / 2.0 (A2DP too)
	GPS receiver	present (NMEA 0183)
	Audio	HTC ExtUSB output, microphone, mono speaker
	Camera	2 megapixels, fixed focus, macro mode
	Battery	1100 mAh changeable Li-Ion
	Other	HTC TouchFLO