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Features of construction
This novelty does not look like a budget device at all, but it is stylish and elegant. P3470 does not really differ from other of its brothers with weight and dimensions: 108 х 58,3 х 15,7 mm/ 122 g. Almost all angles and ends of the phone are rounded by the producer, but front panel remained sharp.




A great deal because of such smooth lines this communicator perfectly fits the hand, and pleasant to touch soft-touch plastic helps this device; front panel with keys on it is made of the latter and the back cover of battery.



In order not to make this device look gloomy there is lacquered metal mounting all over all four ends of the phone; it is of black colors with additional keys made of the same material. May be exactly because this model does not have any extra features in its device it looks elegant and even a little more important which will definitely gladden the student as well as some serious person.
In opposite to the devices of Touch series display of P3470 is little sunk into the device body so it is not the best variant to control it with your fingers, but all control elements of the phone look great and they are convenient in use. We should start with that this round five position key placed in the center under display is a rotating wheel at the same time which adds necessary comfort and light to control functions.




Around this key there is a block of six standard keys with backlights two of which (answer and cancel keys) are a little higher of the front panel surface. As for the rest four keys (two soft keys as well as Ok and Start keys) it delusively seems that they are touch keys.




In fact all the keys of P3470 have short response and which is notable they have tactile response too,
Additional control elements are traditionally placed on the side edges of the device: the left one is equipped with wheel key to control volume and the right one (in the lower part) has inbuilt camera activation key. And there is also one more power key which is placed at the upper end of PDA device.





Stylus has a big plastic “tail” and it is convenient to it out of the body.



Unfortunately the producer did not make it telescopic and its actual length cannot provide comfort and convenience of the work.



It was a quite unusual decision of the producer as for soft reset key, it is placed under the cover of the battery.



At that there are also two other slots: for SIM cards and microSD cards.



It means that if you want to install the card you have at first to take out the battery and cut off its power. It is hard to call this decision a comfortable one.
In the whole HTC P3470 seems to be a stylish, expensive device which ergonomics is spoilt only by unreasonably placed slot of the memory card.

Filing and efficiency
The heart of P3470 is a wide spread TI OMAP 850 platform equipped with 201 MHz processor unit. Of course this is not the ideal of efficiency but we should not forget that the novelty is designed for those users which are ready to sacrifice this parameter for the sake of GPS receiver on board and low price. On the other hand even such simple processor (according to nowadays standards) is quite enough for convenient work with many office applications.
 


Moreover this device is equipped with good memory volume: 256 Mb of permanent memory and 128 Mb of main memory, but t that the part of the memory is used by OS and one more part is taken by preinstalled software, so the user gets appropriately 120,74 and 75,25 Mb.



PDA device efficiency was traditionally tested by Spb Benchmark 1.6 package. The table gives results for the comparison of earlier tested HTC TyTN II which is more efficient and expensive (Qualcomm MSM7200 400 MHz, 128 Mb of main memory and 256 Mb of permanent memory, Windows Mobile 6.0), its review can be also found.
Characteristics    HTC P3470    HTC TyTN II
Spb Benchmark index    265    425
CPU index    1009    1576
File system index    109    178
Graphics index    1974    3500

As it is seen from the table the results are not high, but rather expected. PDA device poorly copes with several simultaneously working applications, but all office (and not only) packages were not a problem for him. Playing of non-compressed video is a little difficult that is why you should obligatory convert files for comfortable watch.

Display
In majority of its devices HTC is still using old TFT matrix with 2,8 inch diagonal and QVGA resolution of 320 х 240 pixels. At using brand TouchFLO interface which allows working with this phone just with your fingers installing such screen is quite justified, but in all the rest occasions it is hardly so. In fact, our today’s hero is a budget device which fully justifies using low resolution display.
The screen has great characteristics of image sharpness and brightness.



The latter is adjusted in a wide range and allows adapting to any variants of lights. As for viewing angles – they are a bit worse. They are not big in lateral and vertical which solidly lowers the convenience at viewing photographs or video.



Camera
We could hardly expect that inexpensive PDA device will have high quality and functional module of inbuilt camera. And our expectations were proved. Camera matrix is only 2 megapixels, it does not have auto focus and flash. The lens are not protected with shutter, there is small removable mirror and lens can be manually switched to macro mode and back – you have to turn silver circle around lens for that.



Interface of a program application responsible for photo and video filming is already familiar to us by other PDA devices by HTC including Touch series. In filming mode there are the following shortcut settings available: resolution, brightness and balance of white. At that you can set filming timer and change the place of storing taken pictures. The rest settings are available via menu.




Pictures are saved in JPG format with maximum resolution of 1600 х 1200 pixels and video in MP4 with resolution of 176 х 144. It is interesting that user has rather man parameters which can be adjusted by him; rather many of them for the budget camera of course. For example there is a setting of exposure measurement. Above that you can use some digital effects.
 




The quality of the pictures is rather medium. There are no faults in color rendition, but frames detailed elaboration is very poor. At that macro filming really disappointed us. In fact there was no some change visible at changing macro mode to common and back – objects look smashed even from the distance of several cm. Lower you can see some samples taken in different light conditions and archive with pictures can be downloaded here.









Communication abilities
HTC P3470 support all range of GSM networks, data transmission via GPRS can be accomplished by EDGE so you will have quick internet anywhere you may find yourself, but you cannot enter web via Wi-Fi, because this device simply does not have this module on board. Together with medium efficiency and medium display as for its characteristics this is one more reverse side of the low price of this device. And as for Bluetooth 2.0 it is hard to find even a budget device without this module and P3470 is not an exception.



It is interesting that via communication interface with PC (ExtUSB) the producer is stating support of high speed data transmission, it means support of full-fledged USB 2.0.



In practice alas the speed does not correspond to the stated - P3470 is not different from its brothers supporting only USB 1.1.

Battery life
Li-Ion battery is not of high capacity, it is only 1100 mAh.



Of course it strongly influences the time of its autonomous life even in spite of low indexes of its general efficiency. At average loading device (conversations, work with address book, texts) you will have to charge your device once a day. Probably its charge will be enough for more but only in economic mode.



At its utmost the device is able working only about 5 hours which is quite enough for watching two full length movies for example.

GPS navigation
Inbuilt GPS receiver is based on standard SiRFstarIII chip. Cold start of device takes not more than 3–4 minutes. If you want to reduce the time of search you can use offered utility called QuickGPS and download data on sputniks via internet. And hot start will take only minute and a half.



Accuracy of positioning was tested by different test packages (VisualGPSce, Auto sputnik) and there were no any claims – navigator is confidently holding connection loosing sputniks only in buildings or long tunnels. If signal is not good enough for you then you can use outer antenna, its jack is hidden under the removable mirror for self portrait filming.
 




Moreover, the novelty is supplied with CoPilot Live 7 navigation package and ability of downloading the map of one city on your option.
 




This program is first of all different from others with its bright interface. In fact principles of package control are similar with analogue programs and it will be very easy to learn the program. In the very beginning it offers you to make some necessary adjustments and if you want it will give you the series of useful prompts and advises.







Maps on display of your PDA device will be shown in 3D or in a more usual 2D mode. There is an ability of changing day mode of operation to a night mode, which are different in colors of maps and object on them. Moreover, the program is able to map the route, to tell the driver about turns in voice and etc.





The maps itself are easily read and have quite big base of useful objects starting with cinema theatres and ending. Upon user’s wish the map can be displayed in a style different from base depending on user’s preferences as for objects colors on the map.







CoPilot Live is a really interesting decision with many advantages, but with one quite serious drawback. The matter is that streets on the map do not have numbers of houses due to which orientation in big cities can be really difficult.

Software
HTC P3470 is operated by Windows Mobile 6.0 Prom but appearance is a bit different due ti the set of HTC Home utilities. So, desktop is of silver color and big digital clock and five bookmarks which provide shortcut access to some applications and settings. Moreover, you can adjust sound profile and learn weather forecast (if connected to internet).







Not less important feature of program complex is a brand task manager which allows controlling launched applications.



Changes touched also standard methods of text input – there are different intellectual modes.






Interface of dialing numbers also changed a little and now there is a function of automatic sending any earlier written SMS at cancelling incoming call. It means that if you cannot answer the call at any time you can send the calling person something like: “In the present moment I cannot answer your call. I will call back later asap”.




Above brand set of utilities PDA device has a series of other software like ZIP archiver, program for reading PDF files in Adobe Reader, application for downloading Java based programs and application for reading RSS Hub (news) and etc.





Resume
HTC P3470 can be called a rather successful continuation of popular P3300 model by the same producer. Of course processor is weak, there is no Wi-Fi and display is not the best one, all this spoils the general scene a little, but stylish and elegant design, great assembly, good packaging arrangement, rich set of software and GPS receiver on board have the wall and make us understand that HTC P3470 can become of the leaders in segment of inexpensive modern PDA devices.