The Many Brands of HTC
From HowardForums Wiki
How Come People have so many names for the same device?
One of the most confusing aspects for newbies is that devices can have widely different names, but have identical hardware specs. The reason for this is simple. Making a killer cell phone and selling a killer cell phone require two completely different skill sets. Making a cell phone requires manufacturing and design skills, while selling the device requires having contacts at cellular companies and customizing the software to each individual carrier so that it will work with special features the carrier has like their internet home page, voicemail system, language features, etc...
Because HTC is so good at building cell phones, while other companies are good at selling them to carriers or directly to customers unlocked. Everyone makes more money in the end. HTC gets enough volume to sell their devices and without having to pay for sales and marketing allover the world. The salespeople get to sell and distribute great devices without having to design and build them. It is win-win.
The confusing part about it comes up when people with differently branded identical devices try to talk online and mutually hack their devices. Some will be calling their devices a Qtek followed by a string of numbers, while others will be calling their device an i-mate followed by some letters and numbers. Sometimes, a T-mobile Device name II, will be the same as a Vodafone Device name III, which makes it even more confusing.
In an effort to avoid this confusion, it is common to see people refer to their HTC device by two common names regardless of how their actual device is branded. The first name is the HTC code name that HTC uses when referring to their device internally and when they try to sell it to carriers. You can't actually buy the device under this name even as a carrierless version. An example of this would be the Blue Angel, Universal or Wizard. The second name people use is the most popular unlocked version of the device. A lot of people refer to any Blue Angel as an i-mate PDA2k. This is probably, because the popular unlocked version often gets quicker rom updates, because they aren't hampered by all the customizations and testing that carrier specific versions get. So when people go online, they often are looking for the ROM's that run on the unlocked versions and refer to their device as such.
To see a list of which device code names match which branded devices see the PDA Phone overview here: Phone PDA Overview
It is important to note that just because brands sell HTC devices, doesn't mean all the devices sold by that brand are made by HTC. Some notable exceptions are the Audiovox 4100 which was made by Wistron and O2 Asia's XDA Atom, which is made by Quanta. It also important to note that not every HTC device is made by every brand as carriers often do not pickup every HTC model. HTC actually builds other models of extremely popular PDA phones and PDA's that are marketed exclusively by manufacturer's too, such as the Treo 650, Dell Axim X50v, etc. They don't follow the name convention though, because the same device isn't sold to other brands under different names. They are never referred to by any name other than their exclusive name.
List and Description of the Different Brands
If you are looking to buy an actual device and your carrier doesn't offer it then you might want to check out I-mate vs Qtek for an actual comparison of the two main choices for devices not offered by your carrier. We don't generally compare the other brands, because they are often sold directly to carriers and your choice between Vodafone and Orange is much more likely to be related to plans and coverage, which is outside the scope of the Pocket PC forum's knowledge and should be covered by other forums at HowardForums.
The list of brands is currently underconstruction. Check back later for more details.
