REVIEW: O2 XDA Flint (HTC X7510)

Introduction It's now more than 18 months since I reviewed HTC's original Athena. At the time the Athena was without doubt the most powerful Pocket PC you could buy, but its size was limiting, the built in micro drive performed poorly and the hardware keyboard hailed back to home computers from the 1980's. Fast forward nearly 2 years and O2 have for us the XDA Flint. Based on the original Athena platform and sharing the same form factor as the original, the Flint has done away with the micro drive, replaced the hardware keyboard and added a truck load of internal storage. The new spec seems to address most of the issues from the original Athena, but two years on is the Flint finally the all in one device the originally Athena promised to be? Read on to find out......

For your delectation photographs are thumbnails which may be clicked on to load a larger image.
Thanks go out to O2 for providing us with a review sample.
For more information on the O2 XDA Flint go to the O2 XDA Flint website: http://www.my-xda.com/devices/xda_flint.jsp

Specifications
Project-Codename: HTC Athena 400
Model ID: ATHE400

Physical-Attributes
Dimensions (width x height x depth): 98 x 133.5 x 16 millimetres 3.9 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
Mass: 375 grams (battery included)

Software Environment
Embedded: Operating System: Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional

Microprocessor
CPU: Intel XScale PXA270
CPU Clock: 624 MHz

Memory, Storage capacity
ROM capacity: 15516 MiB, including 15360MiB user-accessible non-volatile storage
RAM capacity: 128 MiB, 121MiB accessible

Graphical subsystem
Display-Type: colour transflective TFT display
Display Diagonal: 5 " (128 millimetres)
Display Resolution: 640 x 480 (307200 pixels)
Dot Pitch: 0.16 millimetre/pixel
Graphical Controller: ATI Imageon W2284
Video out: NTSC/PAL resolution Proprietary connector

Audio Subsystem
Audio Channel(s): stereo sound
Audio Output: 3.5mm plug
Audio Controller: Asahi Kasei AK4641

Cellular Phone
Cellular Networks: GSM850, GSM900, GSM1800, GSM1900, UMTS850, UMTS1900, UMTS2100
Cellular Data Links: CSD, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA
Speakerphone: Supported
Phone Controller: Qualcomm MSM6275 (2x QDSP4000)

Control Peripherals
Positioning Device: Touch screen
Primary: Keyboard: Attachable QWERTY-type keyboard, 57 keys
Automatic keyboard backlight (upon press of any key) with ambient light intensity sensor

Interfaces
Expansion-Interfaces: miniSD, miniSDHC, SDIO
Supports High Capacity (SD 2.0/HC) memory cards with capacity of up to 32GB
USB: USB 2.0 client, Full-Speed (12Mbit/s)
USB Series Mini-B (mini-USB) connector
Bluetooth;(802.15): Bluetooth 2.0, Internal antenna
Wireless LAN/Wi-Fi-(802.11): IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g, 54 Mbit/s Internal antenna

Satellite Navigation
Built-in GPS module: Supported
GPS Protocol: NMEA 0183
GPS Antenna: Internal antenna
Complementary GPS Services: Assisted GPS, QuickGPS, Geotagging
Navigation Chip(set): Qualcomm MSM6275 gpsOne

Built-in Digital Camera
Sensor Type: CMOS sensor
Resolution: 2048 x1536 pixels (3.15MP)
Autofocus (AF): Supported
Built-in Flash: mobile light (LED)

Built-in Secondary Digital Camera
Sensor Type: CMOS sensor
Resolution: 640 x480 pixels (0.31MP)

Power Supply
Battery Technology: Lithium-ion polymer battery
Battery Capacity: 2100 mAh

Additional Details
Built-in accelerometer: Supported
Additional Features: GPRS Class 10
USB 1.1 host
Attachable QWERTY keyboard

In the box There's a very decent selection of accessories supplied with the Flint They are:- AC adapter 2 clear styli VGA output cable USB cable Wired Headset "SUPER Screen protector" Black accessory travel bag I love the fact that O2 have bundled the full capacity video out/USB host cable with the Flint. We saw some versions of the old Advantage only came with a VGA output. I'm not overly keen on the black accessory travel bag as I think it looks more like a toiletry bag than something you'd use to carry a state of the art convergence device in. I'd liked to have seen some kind belt clip attachment for the Flint as this would still be my personal preference for carrying the device. The other thing I would have liked to have seen bundled with the Flint is a Bluetooth headset. I appreciate that many people will already have one of their own to use but as it really is a necessity with this device including one with the machine would have been nice. As I said this is a very nice selection of hardware accessories but where is the software? The Flint comes pretty much bare and I do not understand the logic to this. When look at the excellent software package that came with the Zest it seems bizarre that the Flint effectively has none.

Convergence Modern life in the 21st Century is becoming ever more complex and hectic, and PDAs that are being developed have to evolve to suit that need. No longer are users happy to carry around a PDA, phone, etc; more functionality is demanded from the market and in ever more pocketable and slight devices. The O2 XDA Flint strives to meet these needs boasting a truly spectacular specification and therefore contains the following areas of functionality within the device: Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) Mobile (cell) Phone Camera GPS Navigation Unit Push Email Portable media player Laptop computer replacement? We will investigate each of these in turn as we move through the review.

Aesthetics In the old days when you bought a device made by HTC you could have it in any colour you wanted...... as long as it was silver. The HTC re-branding a while back means that most of their devices are supplied now in a black hardware and green software livery. The Flint is no exception to this, other than instead of the green highlights we have "O2 Blue". This is only evident on the second function of the buttons on the keyboard, but looks quite nice. A little better than the green I think. Without the keyboard attached, in its PDA form factor, the Flint is all screen. Other than a couple of indicator LEDs and a front facing camera you have just a home button set into the stylish stealth black coloured parallelogram. The slanting edges of the device are obviously designed around the keyboard attachment mechanism but look very smart, especially in landscape. The stylus, a non telescopic black/clear combination, matches the black insert on the top (landscape view) of the device and while a little plasticy in its own right fits well with the device in general. With the keyboard attached, in its laptop form factor, the Flint looks a little top heavy, or rather a little "bottom light". The thin keyboard makes the device look as though it wants to topple over when attached and it looks a little strange until you close it up. With the keyboard acting as the screen cover the sleek lines are once again complete. I really like the look of the Flint, and even in the "laptop" mode it looks ok. During the couple of weeks I've been using it as my main device everyone who's seen it has said how cool it looks. It's big, but beautiful (except if you try and hold it up to your ear!).

Ergonomics I don't think it's going to come as a surprise to anyone to find out that this device is big. If you're using it as a laptop replacement and it's sat on a desk then size of course is not an issue. You'll undoubtedly have seen promotional shots of people carrying the Flint about in laptop mode punching away on the thumb board with smiles on their faces. This would be in the first 4 seconds of carrying the device like this before the mind bending cramps start to occur and you rupture your Ulnar Collateral Ligaments in both hands. In the real world I've found the only way to use the Flint out and about is to remove the keyboard and use it in tablet fashion. By keeping the keyboard packed away the device is just about pocketable in jeans or combat trousers, but is most at home in a jacket pocket. Some people prefer to use the tablet in portrait with the stylus, but I prefer to use it in landscape mode using the on screen SIP keyboard to enter everyday data for SMS etc. With the 5 inch screen the SIP keyboard is just about big enough to use with your fingers even with stubby digits like my own. I'd definitely advise using a Bluetooth headset to make and receive calls. In fact, scratch that. You HAVE to use a Bluetooth headset with this device. You can make and receive calls as is with the Flint and its speaker phone but it is difficult to get a comfortable grip on it and hold it up to your ear with one hand (not to mention it looks a little... strange). In general I really like the form factor of the Flint; the two modes with and without the keyboard offer a fair amount of flexibility for a device of its size. You definitely wouldn't feel confident taking the Flint to the pub on a Friday night. It's a great device for work, but for play I'd certainly recommend something more compact.

Hardware Layout

Front The form factor of the Flint is unique. As we've seen with devices like the Touch Pro, HTC seem to now have the hardware layout of their phone and PDA type devices pretty much nailed down, having evolved over several device generations. The laptop/tablet form factor is pioneering from a Windows Mobile perspective so it's interesting to see where and why the Flint's controls have been placed as they are. It strikes me that HTC have primarily designed the device for landscape use, and the front of the device seems to support this. It's interesting to note here that the excellent dpad button from the old Athena is no longer present. I think this is a real shame. I'm a big fan of the dpad and the Athena "button" was an excellent implementation. The only button on the face of the Flint is the home button. As you'd expect this takes you back to the Today screen. Towards the top of the device the right hand side houses the front facing VGA camera for video calling along with the three status lights for GSM, BT/WiFi and Alert. The GSM and BT/WiFi indicators are self explanatory while the Alert indicator lights up if you have incoming messages (email/SMS/MMS) or missed calls.

Back The back of the device too is quite sparse with just the reset button, camera, flash and two covered aerial sockets. These sockets are to connect an external antenna for GSM and UMTS.

Top & Bottom Interestingly there are no controls on the top of the device and the bottom only has the connectors for the hardware keyboard and slot that houses the battery, MiniSD card and SIM card. These are all tucked away behind a slightly awkward to use sliding cover that while safe and secure once in place, is fiddly to open and close or insert the specific hardware.

Left The left side of the device has the new VGA Out/USB Host combo port along with the volume slider, Charge/Sync port and a 3.5mm headphone socket. It's nice to see HTC are still providing the standard socket on the larger devices. Both the left and right sides also have a speaker giving the device stereo output.

Right The power button and Camera buttons are the other controls located on the right hand side of the Flint. The top right corner of the device has the stylus silo which runs underneath the top of the unit and houses the white and clear stylus.

Battery & Charger The Flint has an awesome sized 2200mAh Lithium Ion battery. It's nearly twice as big as most of its siblings and competitors but then there is a whole lot of machine to power. As a comparison if you look at the 1350mAh of the HTC Kaiser and the 1340mAh of the HTC Touch Diamond you can see it’s on whole new level. I've been quite impressed with the battery life on the Flint. Any WM device that goes a couple of days without requiring a charger is out of the ordinary these days. I found I could get 2 days worth of usage from it comfortably. An average day’s use for me consists of up to 20 minutes of calls, 30 minutes of browsing in a mediocre 3G area and about 100 push emails. I'm not much of a texter but there's usually a couple of SMS in there too. I also use my device as an MP3 player while I'm cycling to work, so there's also an extra 30 minutes of music too, over a set of Bluetooth headphones. For me the 2 day charge is a very important factor when choosing a device so this is very nice indeed.

Stylus The stylus silo for the Flint is situated on the top right corner of the device. The silo is a full length affair with a stylus formed from two pieces of plastic. The majority of the stylus and the point is clear but with a black top to match the case. There are no fancy engineering tricks such as telescopic extensions here it’s solid and sturdy with no fuss. I’m not really a big stylus user myself, but it seems reasonably comfortable to use.

Headset The headset is a fairly nice looking affair, but is not out of the ordinary for this type of device. I quite like the headphones and found the mute button was not too big and bulky as often the HTC ones are. There’s a nice elbow connect too, which makes connecting the headset less bulky. One way the headset does differ to most headsets is the connector on the end. Rather than the proprietary HTC audio connector is a regular 3.5" headset jack. I'm not sure this is by design as to another throw back to the original Athena.

Size There's a huge amount of technology crammed into the Flint, and it's far from being the most compact device on the market. Just how big is it though? I've produced several images to try and give you an impression of its size. As you can see I've lined it up against the Zest, Xperia X1 and HTC Tytn2 (Kaiser). I think the pictures pretty much tell you what you already know. It's big!

If you want a really good impression of the size of the Flint you can take two audio cassette boxes and fill it with 350g of play dough. This will give you an almost exact representation of both the size and weight of the device.

SIM Loading Installing your SIM card into the Flint would be a fairly standard affair..... if you had three hands. As it is, with two hands it takes a little bit of digit gymnastics. First you slide down the panel on the bottom of the device that covers the SIM, MicroSD and Battery. You now have to hold this back while you lift the latch on the battery and press in the red button to release it. Once the battery is out you lift up the white SIM cover and slide in the SIM card. Now repeat in reverse to put the device back together. In all honesty once you've done it a couple of times it's pretty easy but it's the first machine for a long time that had me reaching for the manual to just install the SIM card! Obviously unlike the Kaiser this means powering down the device to swap the SIM cards, but I can’t see this being a problem.

MiniSD Loading As with the SIM loading, installing your MiniSD card into the Flint is a little different to that of other devices, although thankfully you don't have to remove the battery to swap the MiniSD card. As with the 3.5mm headset jack the fact that the Flint has a MiniSD rather than a MicroSD is likely a throwback to the old design. This isn't an issue however. You can easily use an SDHC MicroSD card in an adapter and the Flint is fine with it. I tested up to an 8GB MicroSD card although I don't see why a 16GB or 32GB card shouldn't work just as well. To swap the MiniSD card simply slide open the SIM/Battery/SD cover.

Screen For many people the most attractive prospect to owning a Flint is the enormous (by Pocket PC standards) 5" screen. It seems to me that this was the driving force from a manufacturing perspective too as everything else seems to be built around the screen. The display takes centre stage with all the controls and input devices fitting in around where there is an empty spot. It's worthwhile though because as soon as you power the Flint on you are greeted by a bright and vibrant Windows Mobile screen. From here the Today screen looks superb; it's so crisp and the colours are nice and bright. Watching videos on the Flint at VGA resolution is exceptional. The VGA resolution makes a huge difference if you're using the Video Out to connect to a big TV or a projector for PowerPoint presentations and while you're not getting DVD quality it really is astonishing how well the device performs as a DivX player. This may seem like nitpicking a little as like I said the screen is truly spectacular, but with the smaller devices like the Diamond having VGA screens it would have been nice to see an XGA 1024x768 or at least SVGA 800x600. I guess you can't have everything though!

Keyboard The detachable keyboard on the Flint serves several functions. I like that the keyboard is detachable and that the device can be used as a regular Pocket PC without it. In laptop mode the keyboard acts as a stand for the rest of the device. There are magnets placed at three points on both the base of the main device and on the keyboard which powerfully grip the device into place. You can see where from the warning stickers on the case. The keyboard has gold connectors to make the circuits between its two parts and these fit together flawlessly every time. It's a very well implemented solution. You can see just how strong the magnets are from the image to the right. The second function the keyboard serves is as a screen cover. The key side of the 'board can be placed on top of the device where again the magnets grip it into place. Once in position the screen changes to a small status display that you can view through the clear plastic top edge of the keyboard. Another one of the really clever touches that really make the Flint. The status window effectively displays the same information as the status bar of the today screen. Very nice.

Finally, the keyboard is also used for input. This is where the new facelift really comes into its own. The old keyboard was reminiscent of the rubber keyboard on the 48k Spectrum computer. There was no reassuring click when you press the buttons. In fact you didn't so much click the button, as "mash" it. When I first saw the new keyboard I wasn't overly impressed but when I tried it, all that changed. The new keyboard seems more simplistic than before at first glance and it's not until you start typing and the haptic feedback kicks in your see just how well engineered it is. I've used haptic feedback on other devices before and this is the best I've seen. Most impressive. I guess if I'm nitpicking again it would have been nice to have seen a netbook style keyboard but I think there is a heavy trade off with weight and thickness. The Flint is heavy and thick enough as it is so maybe we can forgive HTC just this once.

Camera This most recent generation of HTC devices seem to be being released with 3 mega pixel cameras. This is a whole mega pixel higher than the last generation. Will this next level of hardware turn what has so far been mediocre photographic performance into a feature as opposed to a novelty? Well, not totally, but it's a lot nearer to a quality of image you could produce an 8"x5" print from. In ideal conditions I think you could just about get a reasonable print, which is a real step forward. The Flint uses the new version of HTC's camera application as you'd expect which gets better at each update. Coupled with the enhanced hardware the results are actually quite good. Sure, it will not win any awards, but from the images below you can clearly see the images are getting better and better as the devices evolve. The low light images are still a bit weak and the high powered LED masquerading as a flash still doesn't really cut the mustard. Maybe for the next generation of devices HTC will give us a real flash? Perhaps. Until then progress is still progress and I do feel the still camera is a good addition to the device.

Telephony Another issue carried over from the original Athena platform devices is that there is not a dedicated telephone speaker on the Flint. Out of the box if you have no headset connected and the device rings the phone defaults to speakerphone mode. I found that if you turn the volume down to its lowest level you can take the call by holding the phone up to your ear although this is not ideal; there is still too much volume to keep the call personal. Realistically the Flint is just too big to hold up to your ear so it's not a massive issue; it just seems strange that a PE device does not have the personal speaker included. In real life you're going to have to use a headset of some kind. Personally I use Motorola S9s. These give me the headset functionality you need and also wireless stereo too. The modern day Bluetooth headsets are of a much higher quality than they were two years ago and so are really a must for use with the Flint. If you do decide to use it the speakerphone function itself is very good with above average (for a WM device) clarity and volume for both incoming and outgoing call audio. Just don't expect your secrets to stay that way for long!

Wireless The Flint comes equipped with both cellular data (CSD, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA) and Wireless LAN (Wi-Fi) supporting the 802.11b, 802.11g (54Mbit/s) protocols. If you're used to connecting to your WM device to the web there's very little to differ with the way it is executed on the Flint. I found the WiFi signal strong and sturdy, not having any issues connecting to the 3 WAPs I tried it on. Likewise the switch between GPRS, 3G and HSDPA was seamless in their respectively enabled areas, with the latter two protocols providing near broadband like speed cellular internet connections.

GPS As with so many devices released in the last couple of years or so the Flint comes equipped with built in GPS hardware. I pulled the MicroSD from my Touch Pro and used my tried and tested copy of copilot7 to test the performance of the GPS subsystem. The Flint picked up a GPS signal quickly compared to a lot of devices, typically from a cold start in clear skys I got a lock from cold in about 40 seconds. Copilot found no issues with getting a lock indoors either, which is always a good test of the GPS chipsets strength. The Flint lends itself well to in car GPS usage with its large screen and slim form factor with the keyboard removed. The extra size of screen means that as well as the obvious large image the program buttons will be much easier to find accurately while driving. With a suitable car mount like those supplied by Brodit you'll get excellent in car use from the Flint.

Bluetooth As is standard with the most (all?) Windows Mobiles devices today, Bluetooth is included, and supports many BT profiles. The regular features of Bluetooth are still up to scratch too, and even better than before. As I've already discussed, the use of a Bluetooth headset is verging on necessity so it's a good job the Bluetooth implementation is strong. I've been using a combination of the Motorola S9 headset and the Sony Ericcson MBw-150. Using both these devices together means I can monitor the majority of the messaging features of the phone and handle the telephony without taking the device out of whatever bag I'm using at the time. This goes a long way to countering the devices bulk. The Bluetooth stack on the Flint handles both connections concurrently without issue and will then jump to my Bluetooth car stereo connection when required as well.

VGA Out/USB Host We've already seen how O2 have packaged some excellent accessories with the Flint, and by far the most impressive of these is the 4-in-1 VGA/USB cable. This one cable is what really gives the Flint the edge over most of the other devices on the market. You get a VGA out cable enabling you to connect your device up to a larger display. With the TV Out application then run the display then mimics the screen of the Flint. This facility works very well for both video and presentations but you also get a USB Host port, a Video Out and a Composite Video out. The USB Host lets you connect regular USB devices to the Flint while the Video and Composite Out ports offer external video connections to Televisions and video cameras etc. I've successfully connected a USB mouse and USB Keyboard via the host port as well as USB sticks and powered HD's. If you get really adventurous however, you can hook up a USB hard disk with some movies on it and view them on your big screen TV! Sweet.

Storage Along with the redesigned hardware keyboard the major aspect of the facelift the Flint benefits from is memory. Out goes the old poor performing power hungry 8GB micro drive and in comes a whopping 16GB of non volatile storage. This equates in real life to 16GB of internal storage. Of course this extra storage adds functionality such as movie player and music player that previously were only available through the removable storage media. The Flint takes the MiniSD cards and seems to be quite at home running my 4GB High Speed card (150X). 4GB is the maximum size of MiniSD available at the moment although as we discussed earlier you can use a MicroSD card in a MiniSD converter which will take up to a 16GB card and theoretically even a 32GB card. The Flint comes with a 256 MB of ROM and 128 MB of RAM. This has become the defacto amount of memory for WM6.1 devices and should provide a nice combination of program space to run applications concurrently and storage space in which to install them to. Good stuff.

CPU, ROM and Memory The Flint comes with the same Intel XScale PXA270 processor as the original Athena devices. Effectively this means the old "power house" is now 18 months old and, to be honest, not the all conquering chip it used to be. It runs at a whopping 624MHz which sounds very impressive. RAM and ROM allocations are 128MB and 256MB respectively which has become the norm for Windows Mobile 6.1 devices. So how does it perform? In real life I’ve had no issues at all with performance on the Flint. It's swift but not blazingly fast. With Copilot running in the background the device has remained usable and navigating through the the SpB software is definitely usable but there's a little lag. I don’t actually recall experiencing any major slowdown at any point with this device, and have not had any unplanned soft resets in the couple weeks or so I’ve been using it. In order to get a more tangible view of the Flint’s performance I decided to pit it up against a few of its major competitors with a shootout to the death. The co-conspirators were the awesome O2 XDA Zest (ASUS) the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1, the HTC Kaiser (TyTn2) and the O2 Ignito (HTC Touch Diamond). My weapon of choice was the only Windows Mobile benchmarking tool I am aware of, SpB Benchmark. I don’t really hold too much stock in benchmarks as they don’t really mimic peoples own individual device just a set of regular tasks. That said it does give a reasonable indication of device performance to compare with other machines so we'll flow with it. Although I could tell from everyday use that the Flint was reasonably swift I wasn't blown away by it. As you can see, for raw power the Zest is still the device to beat. It'll be interesting to see how the newer ASUS devices compare to this. The Flint as you can see edges out the X1 and the Diamond but is roughly comparable. I was surprised by the poor graphics showing of the Flint but this does mimic my real life experiences as I couldn't get my Slingbox client to run as smoothly as it does on the Zest.

PC Integration It was nice to see both ActiveSync 4.5 and Windows Mobile Device Centre bundled with the Flint. Obviously this caters for both Vista and XP users. I didn't experience any issues with XP or Vista, and my Vista SP1 installation auto detected the Flint but only had a default WMDC image. One thing to note is that trying to fill the 16GB of space via ActiveSync transfer is painful and a copy from Mini/MicroSD is not much quicker either. Fortunately, if you navigate to Settings - Connections, the USB to PC applet will allow you to disable the Activesync connection and turn your USB connection on the Flint to directly access the 16GB flash disk. This makes vastly increases the performance from PC to Flint.

Applications The O2 XDA Flint comes with Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional so all the usual programs are in situ. The extra programs included over and above the standard WM6.1 suite are: Adobe Reader LE – allows you to view pdf files Audio Booster - graphic equaliser for WM Audio Manager - GUI replacement for Windows Media Player ClearVue - MS Office compatible file viewer Java - for running small Java applets JETCET Print 5 - printer driver software Opera Browser – alternate web browser Remote Desktop Mobile – remote control servers RSS Hub - allows you to access RSS feeds SIM Manager - allows you to copy contacts between the SIM card and the Zest Voice Recorder – voice dialling and more Windows Live - free messaging services from MS WorldCard Mobile - business card scanning software Zip - Allows compression and decompression of files Some of the applications listed above are actually WM6.1 apps, but are often left out of ROMs. Remote Desktop Mobile is a good example of this. It all looks a bit sparse to me. I'm a bit puzzled by the decision to not include any third party today screen replacement application with the Flint. When you look at the superb shipped applications with the Zest I think O2 have dropped the ball a little in this case. Something like the excellent O2 Menu (rebranded SpB Mobile Shell) would have been a very nice add-on indeed. I would also liked to have seen Cyberon Voicecommander again as with the Zest. This would be particularly helpful with a device like the Flint.

Recommended Applications

SpB Mobile Shell (O2 Menu?) Those of you who follow our reviews at 4WM will remember from the Zest review that O2 used a slightly customised version of SpB’s Mobile Shell software they called O2 Menu. I’ve long been impressed with Mobile Shell and have always installed it in on my non HTC devices. Mobile Shell offers an excellent finger friendly Touch interface that will allow you very easy access to your contacts, shortcuts, settings, etc without having to remove your stylus from its silo. Mobile Shell also contains a very attractive today screen replacement called the “Now Screen” that contains time, date, weather, notification etc information again all in a very pretty touch friendly way. SpB Mobile Shell or "O2 Menu" ,if you like, would be a very welcome addition to the bundled suite indeed.

Cyberon Voice Commander (or Microsoft Voice Command) As I've said earlier, with the modern day Bluetooth accessories you can easily get around the bulk of the Flint if you have the right combination of hardware and software. At the risk of harping on again about the Zest, another software gem bundled in the ROM is Cyberon Voice Commander. Personally I use my devices a lot while I’m cycling. I use them for music primarily but also for hands free use. On most devices I’ll be cycling up a hill and decide I need to phone the wife and it means either stopping, or doing some fancy no hands jiggery pokery to get the device out, select the number and dial it. With Voice Commander I simply press the call button on the headset, and say “call the wife at home” and hey presto, it dials and starts to ring. Cyberon Voice Commander is not just for dialling though, it will read your emails out for you or even tell you the time. Fantastic. There can be a small issue with commands not being recognised in noisy conditions, but more often than not it’ll get you what you want when you want it. With Cyberon Voice Commander installed you could easily leave the Flint in your bag but still make and recieve calls or retrieve your messages.

Copilot 7 (Try & Buy?) As the Flint has an integrated GPS facility O2 it would have been nice to have some form of navigation software bundled with it. Going back to the Zest review again, O2 included a copy of Copilot 7 and the maps for the UK & Ireland on a MicroSD card. Although it would have been great to have a completely free version of Copilot bundled the version that comes with the Zest is a “Try & Buy” version and that would be better than nothing. Essentially you get a 2 week trial of the software with the option to purchase the complete version for £49.99. Copilot 7 is the latest version of ALK Technologies familiar satellite navigation software, and with the Zest you get the latest edition that is enhanced for use on VGA screens. Again this would have been a great addition to the machines software compliment.

Pros & Cons

Pros

Massive 16GB memory
Awesome screen
GPS
3 Megapixel camera
3G - HSDPA
Good Bluetooth Implementation
3.5mm Stereo Jack
Improved Detachable keyboard
VGA/Video/Composite Out available
USB Host
Decent Camera implementation
Good selection of accessories

Cons

Size (Too Big!)
Battery cover a little flimsy
No "personal" phone speaker
Poor selection of bundled software
MiniSD rather than MicroSD

Conclusion I'd usually start my review conclusions with a summary of my overall impressions of device as a whole. The thing is, I really can't make up my mind about the Flint. The facelift HTC have given the hardware is certainly welcome, but why they stopped at the RAM and hardware keyboard seems bizarre. It would have made more sense to me to have taken the opportunity to bring the chipset and processor up to date at the same time and retained the Athena platform's status as a powerhouse. Instead, I feel like they've only done half a job with the Flint's performance only managing to match some of technically weaker devices of today. So now that one of the old Athena’s main advantages has faded away it's a poor device then? Well, no, it's not as simple as that. The Flint is still way ahead of a lot of its competitors by sheer number of features. There is no other WM device on the market that boasts the same feature list. Interestingly, this time around I haven't found the size of the Flint or the lack of a dedicated phone speaker as much as a problem as I did 18 months ago. Today the variation of Bluetooth accessories available are of a much higher quality (as is the Bluetooth stack) which means as long as you can physically move the Flint around, you don't really need to have it in hand to use the major telephony and messaging features. For anyone who wears a jacket, or carries any sort of bag, size shouldn't be an issue. It's also worth simply considering the advantages of the larger device. The bigger screen and screen means a better multimedia experience and to some extent easier control of the Windows Mobile GUI. The newer keyboard also represents a big step closer to a keyboard you can really type on. Add to that the obvious bonus that 16GB of RAM adds to the table and depending on your usage you could realistically be looking at a net book, even laptop replacement. I think "depending on your usage" is really the key here and even more so than with other WM devices. Some folks will simply not get on with the Flint, and it will seem overly large and underpowered for their needs. Others will truly find device Nirvana lurks within its stealthy black shell and will never look back.