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A little time with the HTC Shift. I had a session tonight with HTC and there was a little hands on time at the end with the HTC Shift. Unfortunately, we were unable to take photos of the demo units we played with, but were able to take photos of the "under glass" models.

The HTC Shift is the 1st recent device from HTC that made it to the official announcement without being leaked. That is pretty amazing considering that its not a pocketable device. So, is the Shift a UMPC? HTC is not calling it such.

The device has a 7" screen, a 30gb hard drive, 1gb ram, synaptics touchpad, finger tip reader. It is native 800×600 resolution, but is capable of 1024×640 too. It is running Vista, and is running it well with full aero.

The hands on time was short, but sweet. Many of the questions asked were answered with the standard, "we are not answering that at this time", but we gathered a good general insight. The price point is not set, but is planned for release of Q3. HTC stated that the price is targeting a mid laptop level.

If I had to give my layman’s description… A HTC Kaiser on steriods. The screen slides downward to expose the keyboard like the Hermes or Wizard, but then the screen can tilt up to create a laptop look. It is very light and after 20-30 minutes of running on our table, it didn’t have any signs of heating up.

I think this should give the OQO2 and Sony UX series a serious run for their money.