HTC HD 7 is a popular smartphone introduced by HTC cooperation in 2010 October as the latest release in HTC touch family. It attracted huge number of users due to its exceptional hardware capabilities and latest windows OS 7. It equipped with 1GH processor, 512MB RAM, 5MP camera, multi point touch screen and many more latest advanced hardware components. As Long as it comes with windows mobile OS, millions of Windows PC users were looking forward to go for this device since it’s easier to keep their professional and personal software applications synchronized. All these capabilities made this device stand tall among its competitors within a short period of time after its launch.
Hardware Specification
- Dimensions: 122 x 68 x 11.2 mm
- Weight: 162g
- CPU: 1GHz Scorpion
- GPU: Adreno 200
- Chipset: Qualcomm QSD8250 Snapdragon
- RAM: 576MB
- ROM: 512MB
- Display: LCD capacitive touch screen, 4.3”, 480 x 800 and
- Storage: 8GB/ 16GB
- Audio: Stereo loudspeaker and 3.5mm jack
- Capturing: 5 MP (2592х1944), Auto-focus, LED flash, Geo tagging and 720p HD video recording
- Radio: Yes
- GPS: Yes, A-GPS Support
- Accelerometer: Yes
- Proximity Sensor: Yes
- Gyrometer: Yes, Three-axis
Attractive Functionalities
Operating System
The main attraction of the mobile device is its operating system which is Windows Mobile OS 7. No matter what kind of advanced software applications are available, there are huge crowd in the world who trust ‘Microsoft’ products unconditionally. Obviously this device took the advantage of that Microsoft’s goodwill among general users. The OS deliver seamless multimedia rich user experience with its multi point touch screen, awesome graphical user interfaces and simple, yet comprehensive functionalities.
The one of major contributing factor for the popularity of HTC HD 7 is ‘Windows Office Package’ that comes with it. It allows you to create, edit and manage MS Office documents in your mobile device. My favorite application in there is ‘Microsoft One Note’ which is a popular note book application. The PC version of it could be easily synchronized with mobile device along with any of other office document you use frequently. Additionally it provides excellent messaging system and in there you can manage emails, SMS and MSS, right inside one single application. Other than that, the Operation system has done a nice job with general feature of any mobile device like contact management, internet browsing, call management and configuration.
Design and Interfaces
The HTC HD 7 comes as ‘Candy bar’ design and it make most of its functionalities simple and probably durable. It’s having 4.3” display with touch screen with excellent response time. In the side there are 2 hardware buttons to capture images and control volume/zoom. And there is a hardware button for power management, 3.5mm audio out and mini USB slot. In the back side you can find the 5MP camera, dual LED flash and something really interesting! There is a ‘Kickstand’ which could be use to place the phone in a surface in a slant position and it will be very useful to watch movies in this device. Hats off to this idea!
The default main interface is popular “Tiled” layout of Windows Mobile OS. You can pin any desired application to tiled interface, organize them very easily. Once you press hold one tile in there, it goes to edit mode where you can change the tile order and un-pin them. Once you slide the tiles to left it goes to main menu where you can find entire OS functionalities along with the application you have installed. There are 3 hardware buttons are provided to go back, go to main window and go to search web. Touch screen comes to pinch to zooming functionality which comes very handy. And most if of the interfaces are made beautiful and user friendly using ‘Text effects’ not images will probably result better performance and simple and cleaner interfaces.
Connectivity and Data Services
The most important feature in any mobile device would be its wireless connectivity. HTC HD 7 has almost all the latest advanced connectivity technologies in it including 3G, GPRS, EDGE, HSPA, WCDMA, WiFi and Bluetooth. Quad band GSM allow the phone to be operated with any mobile service provider and 3G connectivity is powerful enough to download data with speed 7.2 Mbps and upload with 2 Mbps. As near field communication methods it’s having WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1. It’s supporting GPRS and EDGE having the objective of provides compatibility to 2G and 2.5G mobile networks.
However it doesn’t comes to infrared, kind a bad news for me and most of latest smartphones doesn’t comes with it. Sometimes back I used to develop some creative mobile applications using IR and It seems I have let it go and move ahead. The device is having mini USB port and comes in handy specially when synchronizing personal data with Windows PC.
Multimedia
As everyone expected HTC HD 7 is having excellent multimedia capabilities. It’s having great multimedia viewer named Music and Video Hub powered by Microsoft Zune. It let you manage your multimedia from many sources including local storage, windows live social media and many other online sources. The device support play back of almost all the common media formats including MP3, MP4, WMA and WMV. Pinch to zoom and multi finder zooming is adding extra color for the image viewer.
The device comes with loudspeaker which is very useful to many people. And the loud speakers are placed in 2 opposite ends of device. Hence it could deliver real stereo sounds with surround enhancements. As long as it’s having a ‘Kickstand’ you could turn this smartphone in to professional quality cinematic playback device.
When it comes to multimedia capturing it provide great hardware support with its 5 MP camera. It is having auto focus, dual LED flash and totally automated configuration. With this camera, it could turn anyone it to a professional looking photographer. As image processing feature it has give many predefined profiles and many capturing profiles to be suited to any environment. Impressively, you can directly go to image viewer from camera by sliding the viewfinder to right.
720p Video Recording
This is one of the most impressive features I was waiting to test with this device. It’s having 5MP hardware camera, 1GH processor and dedicated GPU, So there is no reason to stop it by recording 720p HD videos. Actually it worked great and capture finest details almost same as HD camcorder. The thing that made me surprise is the audio recording and its quality was really great. However, the video quality was very poor in low light environment and it automatically goes in to low light mode which couldn’t stop. Once it goes to that mode the refresh rate it very poor and you can’t make even an average video with that then.
Web Browsing
Web browsing is one of the classical things in this kind of device and HTC HD 7 deliver a phenomenal surfing experience to its users. Personally I love to browser in the landscape mode and it let me have more horizontal space. Multi touch zooming allows you to see specific part of a web page very easily. When it comes to technological stuff, it renders HTML5, JavaScript and CSS very accurately. The default browser that comes with it is Internet explorer and it support tabbed browsing. The interface provides very user friendly tab switching and start new tab feature.
Gaming and Social Media
I can’t stop myself talking about the awesome gaming experience in this device. Some of the very simple arcade games are also really fun to play in HTC HD 7 with its high sensitive multi point touch screen and great audio quality. Even when it comes to 3D graphics, it render them very accurately and with hugh refresh rate thanks to its dedicated GPU. I came across with some cool games like car games which allow you to use gyrometer as a controller which is a WOW idea. I saw this is iPhone as well.
And the device support almost all the social media mobile clients and specially Windows live which allow you to keep in touch with most of popular Social media inside one application. Using them you can upload images, update status and see what your friends are doing very easily and on the move. As long as it comes with Windows mobile OS it’s having SharePoint and SkyDrive integration which comes handy for professionals to keep their life organized.
What I Wish To Find There
It’s true that this is an almost perfect smartphone available in the market yet there were some features which loved to see in there, yet couldn’t. The main thing was, when I was trying to visit YouTube with its default browser it asked me to install Flash player, yet It didn’t support it. Its designed to use HTML 5 yes, but no flash support is a big red light for me to use this device and as I come to know it’s a common factor to iPhone as well. And when I was trying to access Gmail, it didn’t allow me to click on a conversation, but it selects entire area. I believe that this is some thing to do with JavaScript rendering and browser doesn’t support that.
I can’t complain about the battery life why most of the latest smartphones are very bad in there. But as I experienced in HTC HD 7 battery life is even worse. It’s nowhere near the given specification in its official site. And I found some inconvenience when was trying to answer a call. The slider that used to answer the call was no responsive in some instances which were very annoying.
I used to have few memory cards with me since my previous Nokia phone was having hot swappable memory card slot. I won’t be able to do the same with HTC HD 7 since it doesn’t have external memory card slot. Not just that I won’t be able to expand existing memory to store more multimedia files. However, I came to know that there is a hidden memory card slot next to SIM card slot after reading some blog posts, yet couldn’t see it for myself.
The display is very bright, yet I noticed that it’s having very narrow viewing angle. When I use ‘Kickstand’ I can’t simply relax and watch a movie because there is very narrow range where I can see good quality colors. And display is a fingerprint magnet, I had to clean it more frequently than I expected. I wish next versions of HTC touch family will find answer to these questions as well and move ahead taking leaps in the competitive market among other products like Windows Phone 7.
Tags: #HTC #Qualcomm #Smartphone #Windows