Smartphone Thoughts: HTC S640: Unboxing and First Impressions Video

This is an unboxing and first impressions video of the HTC S640, a CDMA 1xEVDO Windows Mobile phone that's sold by Telus in Canada, and as far as I can tell, it's only sold by Telus. So even though this phone has been out since late 2007, I was interested in taking it for a spin because there are virtually no reviews of it anywhere online. It runs Windows Mobile Standard 6, meaning it's a non-touch screen phone and has a QVGA screen, WiFi, Bluetooth, and a microSD slot. It also has a full QWERTY keyboard and shares its lineage with products like the HTC Excalibur and Cavalier. I've long held that the T-Mobile Dash I have is the best Windows Mobile Standard smartphone ever made, but being stuck at EDGE speeds got old really quick.

There's another thing that made this phone interesting to me: my wife would be using it. I'm using a Samsung Jack (Blackjack II) with Rogers, our monopolistic GSM carrier, and my wife Ashley is with Telus, our main CDMA carrier herein Western Canada. For several years now, she's been a two-device user, using variations of the smallest iPAQs on the market, most recently the iPAQ 1940, and a Motorola KRZR for phone-calling duties. She preferred the large screen on the iPAQ and she synchronized her email and PIM data with a 4smartphone hosted Exchange account. She wanted her phone to be just a phone...until she started doing more text messaging. Her skills with T9 were lacking, so a QWERTY smartphone started to make a lot of sense. And since data plans in Canada were finally more reasonable ($30/month for unlimited email + Web), she wanted a Windows Mobile smartphone.

I'll be following up this first impressions video with a Q&A interview - it's been really interesting to watch what my wife liked about the S640, what she didn't like, and what she thought of Windows Mobile 6 (sadly, there's still not 6.1 update from Telus).