HTC HD7 Windows Phone 7 Smartphone Review

With its HD7, HTC is taking a stand with its first-ever entry into the Windows Phone marketplace. The HD7 sports the recently released Windows Phone 7 OS and boasts the largest display available for any such device. This is definitely not your father’s Windows mobile device. HTC combines the HD7′s gigantic display with Windows Phone 7′s media and gaming capabilities, and it aims to deliver a user friendly experience.Visually, Windows Phone 7 is a beautiful OS. Moving away from the traditional PC-like format, Windows Phone uses customizable tiles to help users gain the ultimate in personalization and convenience.
In using the HD7, I’ve found the OS to be smooth and very easy to navigate – especially for a novice smartphone user. There are some areas that need some attention, however, such as multi-tasking and a lacking universal inbox. We will touch on these later.
In the box, the HD7 includes a USB cable, an AC power adapter, and a stereo headset featuring a standard ear bud design. The device comes with a half-
Weighing in at 162 grams, the HD7 is a heavyweight in the smartphone market. The 4.3″ WVGA display has a screen resolution of 480 x 800 pixels and is ready to show off games, movies, and photos in rich detail. Pushing this heavyweight smartphone is a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.
Having a large display does have the potential to make the phone awkward for users with smaller hands and may require the use of both hands for much of the phone’s operations.
The plastic device features a chrome ring that goes around the phone and has a durable feel; this ring does love fingerprints though. One weak point in design appears to be the back panel cover for the battery. This is constructed of very thin plastic and users have complained of this panel breaking or cracking.
To add to your media viewing pleasure, the HD7 includes a rear kickstand. This kickstand, combined with the large screen, makes the HD7 a great device for viewing a movie or slideshow. Speaking of which, the HD7 will play most popular file formats; however, it did lack the capability to play MKV files. This will force some users to convert the file format into a compatible one in order to view their media. Also, DLNA is not supported on the HD7 for media viewing on a TV or similar device.
Like most phones today there is no physical keyboard present. Instead, the large display allows for a clear easy-to-use keyboard, and after much testing, we found both the landscape and portrait mode to be a responsive delight to use.
The buttons on the front of the phone have little movement and are smaller than most devices. They do respond well to touch, but if you are not looking at the screen, it is difficult to be sure if you are pressing the correct one. On the side of the phone lies the camera and volume buttons with a power/lock button at the top. These buttons are quite recessed making volume adjustment awkward during a call.
Bordered by the kickstand lies a 5MP camera featuring dual LED flashes for low light situations. Video can be captured in VGA mode (640 x 480) or 720p. Launching the camera is made easy by pressing the camera button for 3 seconds; something you can do even while the phone is locked. This is one area where the recessed camera button is helpful as it prevents those lovely pocket photos that love to kill our battery.
Although a great device for capturing and viewing media, the HD7 lacks storage space. With no expandable memory, the 16GB internal storage fills up fast when snapping photos or storing other media. For charging and connectivity purposes, the HD7 uses a micro USB cable.
In our testing, the HD7 did not require a restart during use for weeks at a time. This shocked me since I’ve used Windows Mobile versions in the past and have had to restart daily. There was little-to-no delay when launching everyday applications and the OS was very stable no matter what application was running. Unfortunately, this could be in part to the Windows Phone 7 not having multi-tasking capabilities.
As for the phone’s reception, the HD7 performed well tested at three different locations. In the local HSPA+ coverage area, the device had all bars on the indicator and data services were working without any issues. Data still worked in the outlying 3G areas although not nearly as fast as a downtown area. In our remote testing area the phone did deliver one bar of reception and allowed some reliable but slow Internet browsing. Bluetooth and WiFi are both on board with no dropped connections through testing.

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Windows Phone 7 on Nokia?

Nokia is reportedly close to Microsoft. Proximity of the two giants is certainly not without purpose, but was mentioned in order to see the possibility of instilling the Windows OS in the smartphone Nokia Phone 7.

This news comes from technology analyst and author of the menggawangi Eldar Murtazin Mobile-Review site. In his report, Eldar says if closeness Nokia-Microsoft has been going a month later.

Scoping they have pioneered are said not to make way for Microsoft's applications to support Symbian on Nokia. But more than that.

Namely see the possibility of embedded Windows 7 Phone running on Nokia hardware, thus quoted from Gadgetsteria, Monday (20/12/2010).

No mention is indeed the origin of the source of this Eldar. But the figure is believed to have Eldar long had a reputation as tech bloggers with qualified sources.

Nokia itself previously claimed to still want to concentrate to build embedded handsets and Symbian OS MeeGo as its future. As for Android, the Finnish vendor has been confirmed closed door meetings. But apparently not so with Windows Phone 7.

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Review : Samsung Focus Windows Phone 7

Samsung Focus Overview

While the Samsung Focus is definitely a breed of its own, the Windows 7 device is still not a "phone to save us from our phones," as you've probably seen in the ads that are splattered all over the Internet. A phone to save us from our phones would be no phone at all, though we can say that the Samsung Focus makes it easier to manage all of the primary categories, hence minimizing time taken to search for things. We loved the minimalist interface and Samsung's first attempt at a Windows Phone 7 phone definitely ranks among the many attractive smartphones on the market. The Samsung Focus also brings a 5-megapixel camera with 720p HD video recording to the table, as well as a 4-inch Super AMOLED screen. Is the latest Microsoft march a whole new phone revolution, or just a spiffed-up way to handle all of the emerging multimedia content that is making its way into our pockets and purses? Let's find out. 
Samsung Focus Design

The Samsung Focus is an enticing slab of 4-inch Super AMOLED goodness. That's the primary steering wheel—a sleek, smooth, top quality capacitive touchscreen display that flaunts an 800x480-pixel resolution and 50,000:1 contrast ratio, just like Samsung's Galaxy S phones, only the Focus give us a little more real estate. Colors are bright and text is very clear. We get three haptic feedback buttons on the bottom of the display—Back, Home, and Search (Bing, not Google). The Samsung Focus has one of the nicest displays on the market, no bones about it.

The Samsung Focus is also thin and glossy, and just begs to be touched. Screen sensitivity is excellent, and the back panel is composed of a smooth plastic compound with shiny clearcoat. Just like so many other smartphones in this class, the Samsung Focus has a rocker style Volume control, Power/Lock button, Camera button, 3.5mm Audio jack, and Samsung's trademark USB terminal that is enclosed with a sliding door. Underneath the back panel, the Samsung Focus has a 32GB MicroSD card slot, although Windows Phone 7 has yet to support any type of microSD card (if you insert one, it'll be bricked). It's easy to access the SIM card, but a bit more difficult to get at a MicroSD card without removing the battery.

The Samsung Focus does not offer a MicroSD card out of the box, for the reason explained above, but the phone has 8GB of NAND Flash for storage. The Samsung Focus, despite its killer looks and beautiful screen, does not appear to be as rugged as one would like, so you'd really have to take care of this baby. 

Samsung Focus Software and Interface

Windows Phone 7 is a totally different experience when you compare it to Android or iOS4, and we have to say that we liked it a lot. The Samsung Focus is one of the quickest phones we've tested with a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, and the phone's Windows 7 interface paralleled its speed delightfully. Nearly every action featured an animated transition like a page peel or slide, so we were given a very interactive experience. The Samsung Focus with Windows Phone 7 was just such a polished, professional way to organize and interact with all of the necessary attributes on a phone while purging the unnecessary content. Is it a revolutionary interface? Definitely not, but Windows Phone 7 is an excellent operating system that should become very popular.

We'll start with the home screen, where we are exposed to square and rectangle shapes that represent different categories like Phone, People, Messaging, Mail, Internet, Pictures, Marketplace, etc. The shape icons are a plain color that is selectable and the background is black—very simple. However, the icons are live, meaning Facebook profile pictures and message notifications will appear in real time. Now on a traditional Android phone, we're bombarded by widgets and applications that clutter the multitude of home screens on the phone. Not with a Windows phone. After all accounts are setup and networks are configured, the Samsung Focus feels like we're on autopilot at times.

Let's take People for example. When we tap People from the Home screen, we are greeted by an alphabetical list of our contacts from Windows Live, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Outlook, and any other contacts that happen to be configured. We can select a contact and write on their Facebook wall, send them an email, view their website, or view their live feed. You can also add a contact to the Home screen to keep track of your favorites, and we were blown away with how easy it was to find someone and communicate with them. The same thing happens when we tap Pictures. We get a "What's New" column with feeds of all our contacts' latest uploaded pictures, and we can even browse our Facebook albums in addition to the Camera Roll. 

Samsung Focus Multimedia

The Samsung Focus also offers Xbox LIVE with gamer avatars and profiles, Xbox LIVE games, and Spotlight feed. On the Music and Video side, the Samsung Focus siphons the best parts of the Zune to bring synching content from a computer, which is very similar to iTunes. The cool thing was that we could sync our iTunes library from a Mac with a Windows 7 phone. But, it's imperative to know that a Windows software download needed to be executed, or else the Focus will not even be recognized by a PC when connected via USB.

We also can't forget about Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer. With Microsoft Office, the Samsung Focus allowed us to create Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files and share them via Microsoft's SharePoint server. With Internet Explorer, we not only got pinch and zoom, but we could tap and hold on an image and send it as a text or in an email right from the browser. Unfortunately, we didn't have Flash, and could not load YouTube videos in a browser, which is big these days, since any high-end Android 2.2 phone is capable of that. YouTube quality is very good though, but a free YouTube application needs to be downloaded in order to access it.

All in all, the Samsung Focus is one of the best phone interfaces we've seen yet, and wait until we get to the camera section.

Samsung Focus Call Quality/Battery Life

After making a few calls with the Samsung Focus, it became apparent that the phone is well equipped in the quality sound department. No issues to report here, as calls were clean and highly audible. When it came to battery life, that was a different story. Obviously, the Samsung Focus's 4-inch Super AMOLED screen is a battery life sucker, so you'll have to monitor your usage of big applications in order to conserve. If only every phone had the stamina of a BlackBerry.

Samsung Focus Image/Video Quality

The Samsung Focus has a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash and is capable of recording and playing back 720p HD videos. We will tell you that the Samsung Focus performs excellently in bright light, especially in Macro mode. We discovered surprising detail from this phone's images, and colors were natural. In low light, the Samsung Focus did not exhibit the level of sensitivity we had hoped for, however, especially when we shot side by side with the recently reviewed BlackBerry Bold 9780, which proved to be far more sensitive in low light than the Focus.

720p video was not as impressive as we would have hoped either. In bright light with static subject matter, the Focus performs well, but any trace of movement made us feel like we were on the verge of an epileptic fit. This is because the Samsung Focus records at 24fps, so motion is choppier. Low light sensitivity is also not as strong as other phones we've seen, so unfortunately, we can't say that the Focus is a prime 720p machine. It takes videos that are larger in resolution than most phones, and that's about all we can say about that.

The Samsung Focus camera interface is great though. We can actually scroll through pictures we had just taken and scroll to the last frame, which is the live camera, so there's no need to jump back into camera mode—we're already there. We have some basic color modes, a Wide Dynamic Range setting, Auto Focus, Flash/Video Light, and a few other image controls. One thing we did not like was the fact that all of our camera settings would be reset after we had left camera mode. The camera mode on the Samsung Focus is definitely sleek and easy to use, but it's not the best we've seen. One great thing is that we can access the camera from a locked or asleep state, superseding the need to rifle though an unlock screen. 





 

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Review : HTC HD7

The HD7 is HTC’s top-of-the-line Windows Phone 7 smarpthone. It’s the WP7 equivalent of the Android-packing Desire HD with a slight retouches on the exterior design.

The HTC HD7 copies some of the genetics of its year old predecessor, the HD2, although that one was just on WinMo 6.5. The large 4.3″ display wrapped around a combination of metal and polymer body gives it an elegant look.

The edges are lined with a strip of black, polished metal with only the power button, volume controls and dedicated camera in place. The micro-USB port is at the bottom together with the 3.5mm audio port and microphone.

 
The display is pretty large and the screen is crisp and bright. At the bottom end of the glass panel are 3 touch controls — search, home (represented by Windows icon) and back. The single sheet of glass that covers the display is significantly thick and doesn’t touch the top and bottom edge of the front panel. The small gap serves as an opening for the speakers.
I was meaning to write a separate and full review of Windows Phone 7 OS but this is the only time I’ve had a really significant experience with the OS so I might just have to wait a little bit and test how it goes with other models or brands. Nevertheless, my initial impressions of Microsoft’s mobile OS has been pretty good.

It’s pretty obvious that Windows Phone 7 has been developed from the ground up and even if you’re a long-time WinMO user, you’ll definitely not notice any similarities. The OS did not undergo an evolution, it’s been radically mutated. And Microsoft did not just made a 180-degree turn but totally went crazy with the UI. For those who have owned or tried the Zune player, the UI is very familiar.
I’d say the user interface is essentially a breathe of fresh air, especially if you’re coming from iOS or Android. Objects such as shortcuts, widgets, contacts and apps are represented by tiles stacked from top to bottom. You add items by pinning it to the home screen (Start) or remove it by un-pinning them. The tiles are big and bold with options to change color schemes that screams of eye-candy.

Slide the screen to the right and you get the entire list of links to settings, apps and the whole enchilada. The scrolling list might be bearable if you just have a couple of dozens to a hundred items in there but it could get dizzy once the figure reaches several hundreds (by that time, we’ll be needing folders or groups).
The UI makes a lot of fancy transitions in between screens — it flips, swipes, peels, tumbles and slides every chance it gets. It’s like a magician that takes his time flapping his cape around before executing a trick. It’s amusing most of the time especially if you’re just leisurely navigating thru the phone’s menu. However, if you’re in a hurry, it could get tiresome.

WP7 is integrated with Facebook and Twitter very neatly. After plugging in a new SIM and linking my Facebook and Twitter account to the device, I was surprised that contacts from new SMS came in fully propagated — name, avatar, other contacts and status all pulled off from Facebook.
The built-in Mail client is spiffy, clean and runs quite fast. It lacks a search feature though which I hope they’d add in the next update. The IE browser is light, supports multiple windows or tabs and, frankly, is quite fast too.

The HD7 can be managed by hooking it up to Microsoft Zune and synching multimedia files like music, photos and movies can also be done wirelessly as long as the Zune software and the handset is connected to the same WiFi network. You can also login to Windows Live to manage contacts and calendars on the cloud.
The Windows Live account also has some features to ring, lock or erase the phone remotely. The phone also updates itself by sending GPS location on a regular basis. You can login to Live and locate your phone on the map with matching date and time it last recorded its location.

Apps are very essential to the usefulness of any smartphone and thankfully, the Zune Marketplace on the HD7 has plenty of them. It’s not as extensive as the ones found on the iTunes App Store or the Android Market but it’s got some decent numbers.
The more common social apps were actually developed by Microsoft itself (Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare) so you will notice the tight design integration of these apps into WP7.
The games for the XBox Live though are somewhat on the expensive side where games like Bejeweled and Need for Speed costs $7.99 and Assassin’s Creed and Guitar Hero 5 costs $10.99. There’s an option to try before you buy though (much like the Lite version if you will).
HTC also added several of their own apps (all for free) and featured them in the HTC Hub which also doubles as a weather app.

  The HD7 packs a 5MP autofocus camera and takes some pretty decent to good quality photos. It doesn’t handle night shots or low-light shots very well though. Photos are a bit washed out and blueish at times. See sample photos here. Video recording is much better and can do up to 720p.

The virtual keyboard is well thought of, nicely spaced with unique audio and visual cues for each tapped key. You’ll most probably need both hands to comfortably use the handset due to its sheer size.
The kick-stand at the back doubles as a protection for the camera barrel and flips to the side so you can position the handset in landscape when watching movies. The speakers are just beside it and can do a good amount of volume. You’ll need to set the Audio Enhancer app to use Dolby Mobile so you get better sound quality when watching movies.

 HTC HD7 specs:
4.3″ display @ 480×800 pixels
Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 1 GHz processor
576MB RAM
16GB internal storage
Bluetooth 2.1 w/ A2DP
802.11 b/g/n
HSDPA, HSUPA
5MP camera w/ 720p video recording
GPS w/ aGPS support
Motion G-sensor
Proximity Sensor
Ambient Light Sensor
Li-Ion 1230 mAh
Windows Phone OS 7

Microsoft has made good improvements with Windows Phone 7 OS and pairing it with a powerful hardware like the HTC HD7. We’ve haven’t had much hands-on time with the HTC Trophy and HTC Mozart, both of which are running on WP7 as well, but I can definitely say that the HD7 is looking to be the much better model.
The OS comes with a lot of flair but it still feels a bit half-baked with all the missing little features and basic controls needed. It’s a really good start though and the addition of more apps and future updates should address all that. The only multi-tasking I was able to do is play music while browsing the web or using the camera. Cut & paste is also missing too but Microsoft is said to be working on that in the next update.
A few more software/firmware updates and addition of more useful and affordable apps in the Marketplace could make the HTC HD7 a good alternative to those who are eyeing the Desire HD.

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Review : HTC 7 Mozart

HTC announced three Windows Phone 7 devices for Australia during Microsoft's launch of its new mobile operating system last month. Of the three, only the HTC 7 Mozart sports a unibody aluminium chassis similar to what's found on the HTC Legend and the latest Desire HD smartphones. It is also the only model among all the launch devices from HTC, LG and Samsung to come with an 8-megapixel camera and Xenon flash (which did not perform to our higher expectations).

• Good: Xenon flash with 8-megapixel camera • Unibody aluminium design • Some useful HTC apps including one for handling incoming calls
• Bad: Camera implementation needs improvement • No panoramic feature for camera • Touch-sensitive keys under screen can disrupt gaming

Design

With a 3.7-inch WVGA screen, aluminium chassis and curved edges, the Mozart looks a lot like the HTC Desire from the front. Those who love metallic materials will be pleased to see that the aluminium extends all around the back, save for two plastic portions on the top and bottom. We feel the non-symmetrical ridges and cut-outs of the unibody design are quite cool-looking, but admit that not everyone will take a liking to it.
Unlike the Desire, the Mozart has touch-sensitive buttons on the front. These are the Back, Start and Search keys as required by Microsoft. While they work well, and we like the haptic feedback we get when we used them, we would have preferred physical shortcut keys as found on the Desire. This would reduce the occurrence of accidental presses when playing games holding the phone in landscape orientation — when we were playing Rocket Riot, the Search key was unintentionally activated, kicking us out of the game. Since Xbox Live is a big part of what makes WP7 attractive, we feel physical keys will reduce the chance of such occurrences.
The Mozart does have some physical buttons around the edges. These include the power toggle on the top, camera shutter on the bottom right edge, and volume controls on the left.

The 800x480-pixel LCD display was bright and showed text and images well. We had no issues with it whether indoors or out in bright daylight.
Like the HTC Legend, the plastic cut-out on the base has to be removed to access the removable battery. The Mozart doesn't come with a memory expansion slot, but you do get 8GB of built-in storage.

Features

Connectivity-wise, you get the usual crop of options available to a high-end smartphone. These include HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and A-GPS for satellite navigation.
At the software end of things, we know Microsoft has dictated how the interface should look, so there's no chance of HTC adding its Sense UI to the Mozart. To differentiate itself from other vendors, the Taiwan manufacturer has included a few proprietary apps.
The starting point of getting a unique HTC experience on the Mozart is through the HTC Hub program. The first thing you'll see upon firing it up is the time and weather — this looks just like the most prominent widget found in every HTC Android phone with Sense. Apart from that, it gives thumbnails of other exclusive HTC apps, which will take you to the Windows Marketplace to download.
Of the available apps, the one we found most useful is called Attentive Phone. This gives the handset extra features for handling phone calls. For example, the "quiet ring on pick-up" option detects when you pick up the Mozart from a table when it's ringing and lowers the ringing volume. The other options include "flip for speaker", which activates the speakerphone during active calls when you turn the phone over; "flip to mute ringer"; and "pocket mode", which detects when your device is in a pocket or bag and increases the ring volume accordingly. These features have all been implemented in the Android-based HTC Sense and we are glad to see them in HTC's Windows Phone handsets.
Other apps include Photo Enhancer for adding effects to images, Sound Enhancer for an audio equaliser, Stocks for checking your quotes, and other extras like a unit converter, notepad and to-do list program. There is also a Flashlight app, but take note that this won't work with the Mozart's Xenon flash as it cannot be turned on persistently like LED lights.
With an 8-megapixel sensor and Xenon flash, the Mozart's camera has the best specifications of all the WP7 launch models. The camera app is pretty responsive and focuses quickly. It also gives options such as portraits, sports and candlelight for different shooting scenarios. Fun filter effects including sepia and negative can also be added.
Taking a photo in auto mode was a bit of a challenge. The Mozart tended to lower shutter speed to compensate for dim lighting. This gave properly exposed shots but also increased the incidences of blurred photos. Typically, it's hard to hold a lightweight camera phone very still, especially when you have to apply pressure to press the shutter button, adding to the difficulty of getting a sharp image without hand-shake blur. We would have preferred it if the camera allowed for a slightly underexposed shot as a compromise for dim lighting.
Of course, using the Xenon flash does go some way to alleviating hand-shake problems. One issue in its implementation is that the shutter sound goes off before the shot is actually taken. A user may instinctively move his hand down before the image is captured, resulting in a missed or blurred shot.
When you do get your shot, images looked decent with accurate colours. Using the sports mode helps to solve the slow shutter speed without flash issue, but image noise becomes more apparent. The HTC 7 Mozart can take 720p HD-quality videos. Click here to see some images and clip.
Overall, we were not impressed with the indoor performance of the Mozart's 8-megapixel shooter. It seems some of these issues could be solved by a software update and we hope HTC releases one soon. It would be good, too, if HTC could add a sweep panorama mode for taking landscape shots, like on the LG Optimus 7.

Performance

With one Live and two Gmail email accounts set to sync every half hour, the occasional phone calls and text messages and social networking, the Mozart battery life lasted slightly over a day of use on a full charge. This is comparable to other smartphones, but given the fact that you can't sync social-networking apps automatically on the Mozart, we expected it to perform a little better.
Call quality was good and we didn't experience any dropped calls during our period of testing. The speakerphone on this handset was good, loud and sufficiently clear. Audio for videos was also decent, though we would suggest using headphones instead of firing up the speakers when in public — it's more civic-minded to do so.
However, on a few occasions, we were not able to connect to the cellular data network in spite of good reception at the location. We tested the network using the same data plan on an iPhone 4 and it worked fine.
Speed-wise, the Mozart performed fine with its 1GHz Snapdragon processor and 576MB RAM. Transitions were smooth and all common tasks such as test messaging and bringing up the address book were done snappily. Loading times were a little long for Xbox Live games, but that slowness has been felt on all the WP7 devices we tried so far.

Conclusion

As mentioned in our Optimus 7 review, the LG has the best set of proprietary apps so far. This opinion has not changed after our evaluation of the Mozart. With better camera specs, this HTC should have rightly aced the imaging aspect but didn't because of some usage abnormalities.

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