Qtek 9100 is one of the products from the HTC Wizard platform. HTC (High Tech Computing) is a Taiwanese manufacturer, while Wizard is the code name of the platform. This labeling makes sense as the mentioned Taiwanese company usually provides its products to mobile operators and other companies, which label them consequently. In other words, one and the same product appears on the market under different company logos and the situation seems to start to spin out of control. Here is the list of some of the brands, under which the HTC products are sold: Qtek, i-mate, O2, Orange, T-Mobile, Dopod, Krome.

The Qtek label comes closest to the origin for it is a registered label of the Taiwanese manufacturer. If you run into names like MDA Vario, I-mate K-Jam or O2 XDA Mini, you can be sure that they all are nearly identical to Qtek. The differences among them usually rest in the additional software equipment and the contingent minor modifications of the firmware. Just to show you that it is not all so simple, I will only mention the fact that HTC offers its Wizard to its partners in three hardware versions.

Qtek 9100 is a communicator, which basically means a pocket computer with added call application. It is based on the latest version of the Windows Mobile 5.0 OS and features a sliding QWERTY keyboard.

Qtek 9100 is a device meant to be primarily used for work, just like all communicators we already know. Despite the fact that Windows Mobile is able to back various types of excellent games and plenty of multimedia functions and to play both MP3 files and videos, these extras will definitely be the last to be taken in mind by the users, when they consider buying the device. A far more important feature will probably be the Wi-Fi support, the good synchronization options or applications for work with documents and office tools.

Do not look abeam

When closed, Qtek will first remind you of HTC Magician (MDA Compact, Qtek S100, i-mate JAM). It has nearly the same dimensions - 109 × 58 mm. Almost the entire front area is occupied by a big display and a few buttons. What surprises is the thickness of the device. It has been extended to 24 mm (compared to Magician, which is only 18 mm), due mainly to the keypad, which slides out. It is also slightly heavier - 160 g, but such a weight is quite usual for a communicator. Qtek 9100 fits well in the hand as all its edges are perfectly rounded.

The keypad consists of four lines of silver oval keys. The spacer located in the middle of the bottom line occupies an area of two standard keys. In the upper part you will find two additional context keys, which start and control the functions currently displayed in the state bar. People with bigger fingers may find work with these keys a little bit inconvenient as the latter are situated much too close to the display.

Obviously, a keypad with 41 keys, which lacks a separate number line, is not very comfortable for all kinds of operations. Beside the standard shift function for capital letters, you can also use the blue dot function key. By pressing the latter you start to write either characters put on a second place, or numbers. The flag key opens the Start menu; the OK button confirms the current selection. Here you will also find a standard Enter key, a delete key and cursor keys.

The keys are solid, precise and big enough. Although they do not rise too much above the surface, writing with the keypad is definitely more comfortable and faster than writing with the pen. Qtek's keypad is also significantly better than the one of MDA III. Naturally, it does not allow for using all fingers. You will do best if you type with your thumbs, holding the communicator in both your hands. The distribution of the keys is more or less identical to the one used in common computers. However, as the keys on the communicator are organized in a matrix and certain lines are slightly moved, it will take you some time before you get used to its keyboard.

Standard display

The display features a standard resolution of 240 × 320 pixels and shows 65K colors. Even though this type of communicators are not equipped for work with VGA yet, the display of Qtek is fine enough, because it is relatively small (43 × 58 mm). The display is clear and has good contrast. Unfortunately, the touchpad surface is glossy. Within the settings you will find a 5-steps backlight option. In the first stage the backlighting is fully switched off. What a pity that the backlighting is not separated into two modes - for battery use on one hand, and for external power on the other.

Below the display you will find a big four-way button with a confirming middle part as well as two relatively small functional keys and the two big red and green receiver keys for call control. Above the display there are two additional keys: the left one opens the message applications, the right one starts the internet browser. The button placed on the right side of the device starts both the voice control and the voice recorder applications. The second button opens the camera application. On the left side there is a key for the Comm Manager application.

The four application keys can be assigned different applications from the setup menu. What's more, the voice recorder key recognizes the difference between a short and a long press.

There are LEDs on both sides of the microphone. The left one uses various colors to indicate ongoing wireless connection through Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. The second LED lights up when the GSM mode is active, when SMS is received or when the phone is being charged. It also alerts you about reminders.

Is it slower?

The most discussed part of Qtek 9100 in all internet forums is its microprocessor as HTC has used Texas Instruments OMAP 850, which works at 195 MHz. Even though it is a different processor than the ones used in other PDA/communicators and frequency is not its most important feature, there are certain doubts about its reliability as far as intersection with a sophisticated OS like Windows Mobile 5.0 and a different memory manager is concerned. Some users quote everything they did not manage to run in Qtek 9100, others praise the speed of the communicator.

The speed dilemma quite difficult to solve. Yes, Qtek 9100 is fast enough, but not in all cases. If you play MP3 files in background, the other applications run slow. The change of the direction of the display is not the fastest, either. To sum up, work applications in Qtek 9100 are generally fast enough. Yet, if you mean to use memory-intensive multimedia programs or to browse complicated web sites, the device may not perform at high speed. There are various tweaks including registry modifications, but we do not recommend you to rely too much on them.