When Microsoft ultimately launched Windows Mobile 6.5 early on in the year, there might have been masses of fanfare, but there had been small fair excitement.
After a luke warm showing at MWC in Barcelona followed by the right launch this October, nobody was precisely up in arms over the OS, though support from the huge M’s partners was characteristically bounteous. Still, there had been nary a ray of light to be seen in the otherwise dark and basic landscape of handset offerings… Till the HD2 came along. In Aug of the present year, HTC showed off what appeared to be one of the few Windows Mobile devices capable of generating truthful zeal.
The big, full touchscreen device boasts inspiring specs : a 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, a generous 4.3-inch, eight hundred x 480 capacitive WVGA touchscreen display, a five megapixel camera, GPS, and tons of other knobs and whistles. But the center piece here isn’t the hardware, it’s HTC’s fully reconditioned control interface, Sense, which doesn’t just hide Windows Mobile 6.5 — it all but zaps it out of existence. Sadly for Microsoft, that is the most captivating part of this equation.
So, is the HD2’s new face enough to quell the bad vibes of Windows Mobile and make the platform appear practicable again, or is a challenge which takes more than only a coat of paint? We’ve taken a tough glance at the phone… So read on to discover. The HD2 is a superb monster. It’s a lumbering, threatening, great slab of a widget. If you suspect the device looks gigantic in photographs, it’s nothing in relation to how it appears up close. Yes, the HD2 is enormous — some might say too big — nearly less a telephone and more a pill. We do not happen to fall into the camp which has grouses about a device of this size ( all of it measures 4.74-inches up and down by 2.64-inches across ), in reality, we like the bulk and surface area of the HD2.
Naturally, not everybody will feel as loving about the size as we do, and although the telephone is a slinky 11mm ( 0.43-inches ) thick, the sheer vastness of the handset could be a turnoff to some ; to be fair, small-handed people may have difficulty getting happy with their grip. The industrial design of the device itself is completely at home with its contemporaries in the smartphone space, and the metal and glass unit comes off feeling like a sort of giant, first-gen iPhone ( minus the gaudy bezel ). It strikes just the right middle ground between complex and ostentatious — and we think it is a winning mix. The basic layout of the HD2 is tidy and basic, providing some hardware buttons, and leaving the remainder of the navigation up to that gorgeous screen. On the front of the device are a collection of standard hard keys : telephone, home, a Windows key, back, and end. Round the left side is a thin volume rocker, along the bottom is the micro-USB port and 3.5mm headphone jack, and the backside discovers an oddly sticking out camera — it truly stands off the remainder of the phone. In all it’s a hunky and helpful mix, but given all this property, a ringer on / off switch and dedicated camera button would’ve been welcome inclusions. Internals Much fuss has been made about the courage of the HD2 — mostly due to the inclusion of the heavily hyped 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, a first for HTC. We cannot lie ; this thing blazes. For a WinMo device ( or any gadget actually ), the HD2 is one of the most liquid and snappy that we’ve tested. Applications open up like whip cracks, scrolling thru menus in the graphically intense Sense UI is buttery smooth, and the final speed of the telephone feels sped up compared to its rivals — particularly in the Windows Mobile space ( including HTC’s other offerings ). Except for the ‘dragon, the device sports 512MB of ROM, 448MB of RAM, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, an auto-focusing 5-megapixel camera with twin LED flash, a microSD slot ( supporting up to 32GB cards ), a 3.5mm headphone jack, plus an accelerometer, vicinity sensor, and light sensor on-board. To claim it’s stacked is an understatement ; hardware-wise, the HD2 joins the ranks of devices like the Droid, N900, and Liquid in the new class of high-end smartphone.
As we announced before, the display is actually the center piece of the HD2. The mixture of the size and resolution makes a serious impression when you first reach for the telephone, and that feeling doesn’t wear off quickly. The display is thankfully capacitive and multitouch ( a hand-rolled mixture from HTC, unavailable in Microsoft’s stock WinMo 6.5 build ), and looks tremendous whether under low light or in sunnier conditions. We would not say the out of doors performance was mind blowing, but it is actually simpler on the eyes than plenty of its rivals, and the dimensions of the display helps with general clearness in less than ideal circumstances. Apropos color and contrast, the HD2’s screen is a champ. Pictures and video looked saturated but not soaked, and blacks appeared superbly deep to us. On the touch front, the HD2’s display appeared ultra-responsive to us when zooming through pages.
What was especially nice was using HTC’s inspiring on-screen keyboard in portrait mode on the telephone.
Right from the gate we had no issues entering text quickly and meticulously, and the girth of the phone joined with the super-smart predictive text input made drumming out messages a breeze. With a UI as heavy on the visuals and touch interaction as the Sense Experience, you predict a lot from a screen, and the HD2 definitely delivers. The HD2’s five megapixel camera with autofocus and twin LED flash is only part of the cameraphone experience ; software factors in heavily, too, and HTC has loaded up the device with its own special mix of camera / photo management apps. At the outset, we felt the device was capable of truly solid picture-taking, offering more than sufficient standard shots and decent macro with glorious focal lengths for the little lens. We ended up with a few nice pictures — the focus time was adequate, and while the color balance appeared a bit mismatched to our subjects, it was not a show stopper by any means. Generally, the camera performed dutifully, and looked on par with plenty of the HD2’s contemporaries. We cannot say that is a consistent feeling we have about this camera because of the wonderfully cart experience the software provided when attempting to capture video.
Changing to video mode caused the device to stutter into the secondary functionality with a not-so assuring hiccup and jump. After we managed to basically shoot, what we saw on-screen was a laggy, jerky mess. The refresh rate was deplorable — maybe five FPS. We experienced similar issues when going from dark to light settings with the still mode, but nothing like what we saw when shooting video. The genuine insult occurred after we completed shooting ; when making an attempt to play back the video, not only did it never load, but it crashed out the app and forced us into a pleasant Windows Mobile mistake screen.
The experience was a fast and unpleasant reminder that irrespective of how pretty the window dressing is here, HTC has staged its fashion show in a building that should be prepared for demolition. By coincidence , some HD2s in the field are troubled with a unusual issue causing pictures to come out with robust pink casts, and admittedly, our unit did have a wierd hue in some shots ; HTC has still to decide whether this’ll need a hardware or software fix, but for the sake of current owners, we are hoping it is the latter. Spokesman / earpiece The sound on the HD2 was undeniably more than OK. We would not say it was Droid-level lucidity, but HTC has done an excellent job of supplying the telephone with a solid, loud spokesperson, and a decently clear earpiece. We principally tested the unlocked device on T-Mobile, which handled calls well, and there had been little-to-no distortion or noise for both receiving and sending. The spokesman had no difficulty handling our meeting calls ( of which there have many lately…
Hi revamp ), and all callers reported clear signals from our end. Sometimes there had been tiny to report of note, suffice to claim that the HD2 held up well in tests, and definitely cannot be knocked on sound quality.
In the auto industry, there’s a concept known as coachbuilding by world-renowned firms like Bertone, Zagato, Karmann, and Fisker (yes, of Karma fame) — a nearly century-old boutique industry of brilliant designers and craftsmen taking existing vehicles from big manufacturers and turning them into beautiful, customized works of art. The end results are almost always more stunning than the starting point (take Pininfarina’s Enzo-bodied P4/5, for instance), a testament to the spectacular creativity, talent, and flexibility of both the coachbuilder and the stock car’s components.
What does any of this have to do with the HD2, you ask? Well, in the world of coachbuilding, the designer always starts with a great car — always. No exceptions. You need a great canvas to make a great painting, so to speak, which is why cars from manufacturers like Ferrari are frequent targets for the business. That’s where HTC continues to go wrong: they’ve proven time and time again that they are the Pininfarina of the phone world, but they’re building their masterful works of art around the technological equivalent of an ‘84 Caprice. You can only hide so much, only conceal the phone’s true underpinnings so well.
What does any of this have to do with the HD2, you ask? Well, in the world of coachbuilding, the designer always starts with a great auto — always. No exceptions. You want a great canvas to make a great painting, so to communicate, which is the reason why vehicles from makers like Ferrari are regular targets for the business. This is where HTC continues to go bad : they have proved time and time again that they’re the Pininfarina of the telephone world, but they are building their masterful pieces of art round the technical equivalent of an ‘84 Caprice.
You can only hide so much, only conceal the telephone’s true under structure so well.
The HD2 pulls this smoke-and-mirrors sorcery trick more convincingly than any WinMo-based HTC before it. That is not up for discussion — it’s true — and for folks who need to stay on the platform but wish to run as a great distance away from the stock experience as practicable, the HD2 is the solution. . In fact you might say it’s “the answer” for Windows Mobile 6.5, period — this is generally the best WinMo device ever made, with world-beating hardware and a specification list that’d make any geek drool.
At last , though , it will take a comprehensive refurbishing of the core to make even the best “coachbuilt” WinMo-based HTC telephone a simple advice, and that requires a commitment on Microsoft’s part that we haven’t yet seen. Will we get there before competing platforms — like HTC’s Android stable, for example — take over? Only time will tell.
Original review and photo by Engadget.com
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