By the looks of the Star Trek it might seem to look like an ordinary flip phone, but in fact is not just any flip phone. The Star Trek has Windows Mobile 5 OS with a 200 Mhz processor plus a whole lot more. The HTC Star Trek is one of the newest phones from HTC ( High Tech Computer Corp.). The Star Trek is the first and only flip phone made by HTC. Although the phone is made by HTC, it does have many other names, for example the Star Trek is also known as the I-Mate smartflip, Qtek 8500, Dopod S300, Orange Spv F600 and soon to be Cingular 3125.
The Star Trek phone is a major innovation to the world famous Motorola Razr. The phone has major similarities with the Razr in looks but not in features. The Star Trek is 15 mm thick as opposed to the Razr which is 13.9 mm. The Star Trek has an external screen, which is surrounded by a chrome circle. Underneath the external display there are three buttons for music playback. Although there are various designs of the phone, the one I am reviewing has the three buttons in chrome color (others are in black). The buttons for music playback are previous button, pause/play button and a next button. At the bottom of the phone is where all the various branding of companies is located. The brand that I am using for this review is Dopod which was a company recently bought by HTC.
When the phone is flipped open, it resembles the V3 Razr. The key pad is chrome and looks nicer than the Razr. Also I found that pressing the keys is a lot easier because the buttons are bigger and have a better layout. The keypad also has two buttons that the Razr does not have: a ?home? button to go to the home screen no matter how many programs or applications are open. The ?back? button which has a picture of an arrow pointing left. This button is the best when it comes to Smartphones because you can toggle through all the programs that are currently running.
Features
The Star Trek has all the basic features that a normal flip phone would have. You can set up tasks and appointments, Alarm clock, create voice notes, create speed dial numbers and play games.
The Star Trek also has advanced features that a normal flip phone would not have. The Star Trek has Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player 10, File Explorer, Pocket MSN, Task manager and a whole lot more.
The camera featured in the Star Trek is standard 1.3 mega pixel. You can also take pictures when the flip is closed, using the external display you can take self-portraits. The camera has many settings, for example: self-timer, zoom, white balance, resolution, quality, capture mode, effects etc. The camera is great but the downside is that there is no flash.
One of the most advanced features the Star Trek has is the A2DP profile. A2DP is stereo sound quality over Bluetooth, before the sound would be mono and not good enough quality to listen to music, but not anymore!!
Display & Audio
The HTC Star Trek has two displays. The external display has 128x 128 resolution and displays a lot of information. From the external display you can see the time and date, see your signal strength, battery level, Bluetooth, vibrate mode/ringer mode, GPRS or EDGE capable. You can also take pictures with the phones external display if you want to take pictures of yourself. The best part about the external display is that you can control your music. There are the three buttons to toggle through music and pause/play. You can put the volume up or down using the side volume buttons. On the external display, you can see the song title, the volume level, time remaining in the song etc. The internal display has a resolution of 240x 320 and displays 65,000 colors.
The HTC Star Trek supports A2DP meaning that you can stream stereo audio to a Bluetooth device. Before A2DP the sound would be mono and not good enough quality to listen to music. The best part is that you can listen to music from your phone all wirelessly via Bluetooth headphones. I have tried the A2DP profile using the new Motorola Ht820. In my opinion, music sounds better than I imagined and I could not believe that it was over Bluetooth. Only the latest phones have this feature and soon it will be the next standard in phones just like ordinary Bluetooth is now.
Another cool thing you can do with this phone is stream music to your car radio wirelessly. New car stereos have Bluetooth built in so you can listen to music from your phone. For people that do not have Bluetooth enabled in their car, they can purchase the iTech Clip S35 that can plug into an FM tuner or cassette adaptor. Basically the iTech Clip S35 is a Bluetooth headset that has a built in headphone jack, and has the A2DP profile. All you have to do is connect your phone to the headset and connect the headset to your stereo via a FM tuner or cassette adaptor and you?re all set to play music from your phone to your car speakers wirelessly.
The Star Trek also comes with wired stereo headphones which are also very impressive because of the high volume and quality. The headphones are black in color and have a built in mic with volume control.
Entertainment, Internet, Storage, Connectivity
Entertainment on the Star Trek is amazing because you can do a lot more than a normal flip phone. The Star Trek has Windows Media Player 10 built in which is great when listening to mp3's. The best part about Windows Media Player on the Star Trek is that when the phone is flipped closed but Media Player is open you can access everything with the external display. If you want to go one step further and watch all types of videos you can download a free program call TCPMP for Smart phone. You can also download awesome games made especially for Windows Mobile Smartphone or play regular Java games with the built in Java midlet application.
The HTC Star Trek does not have Wifi built in. Although it would be great, it would not be practical with a low resolution screen and no QWERTY keyboard. The Star Trek does have GPRS and EDGE so it is capable of going on the internet. The Star Trek's OS has Internet Explorer Smartphone Edition which is an excellent web browsing tool. With Internet Explorer you can save favorites and have options to warn you when changing to an unsecure page, warn you when the page content is blocked by security settings and whether or not to allow cookies.
The Star Trek has 64MB of RAM and 64MB of flash memory. The Star Trek also supports an external memory card which is Tans Flash (Micro SD). The good thing about the memory card is that 2GB have just been made by Sandisk and will be on sale soon. The downside to the memory card is where it is placed.
In my opinion the memory card should have been placed somewhere else because it is directly underneath the SIM card slot. Not only do you have to take out the battery but you also have to take out the SIM card to place the memory card. This means that you cannot use a card reader because it is unpractical taking out the battery and SIM every time.
The Star Treks Bluetooth works great. I connected it to my Samsung WEP 200 and works awesome. Another good thing about the Star Trek is that even when using Bluetooth all day the phone's battery was still half way. Although I don't use my phone as much as others may, I still believe that the battery life with Bluetooth on lasts a lot longer than the Razr. The Star Trek has Bluetooth version 1.2 and has A2DP stereo over Bluetooth built in. With many other devices you have to update the ROM in order to get the A2DP stereo over Bluetooth profile.
Construction & Conclusion
The HTC Star Trek is one of the most solid phones I have seen. The phone is a lot higher in quality than the Razr too. In my opinion, the Star Trek is very durable and will last a long time as long as you don't drop it often!!
In conclusion, the Star Trek is an exceptional phone with many features. The Best part about the Star Trek is that it has one of the best reception ever and is Quad-Band!! The best part is it's size and looks, the phone looks like an ordinary phone but when opened you can see the Windows OS. Although the phone resembles the Razr, the Star Trek is light-years ahead in technology!! Here are some positives and negatives I found with the phone:
Positives:
- Small size and futuristic looking
- Stereo over Bluetooth profile is built in
- Windows OS
- Expandable memory
- Quad Band with the best reception I have seen
Negatives:
- Expandable memory card is located under the sim card, which makes it hard to access
- Low resolution screen
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