Best Phone Blog

The new HTC HD7 is the phone that is being billed as the ultimate in entertainment and it seems that the phone will not let down HTC in that department though. The phone, despite offering the best in terms of entertainment is very light on your pocket. This is because the phone has very compact dimensions and measures just 162 grams.

The phone houses in a massive touch screen display that measure in at 4.3 inches. The best possible way to utilize this screen is to watch movies, and you can do so in High Definition because the phone’s massive 16 GB of internal storage lets you do that without a sweat. The phone has a 1 GHZ processor that makes HD video playback and many other high end functions easy. The phone also has 576 MB of RAM and 512 MB of ROM available.

A 3.5 mm stereo output lets you enjoy the videos and songs that you would have stored in your phone on any other headset should you not decide to use the phone’s fantastic speakers. The phone comes with Dolby Mobile and SRS surround sound technologies. The phone also has a stand that comes out from the camera and this lets you enjoy the movies without actually holding the phone. Being a Windows Phone 7, you can enjoy Xbox LIVE integration that lets you play Xbox games on your phone.

The phone not only lets you watch HD movies, but record them as well. This is because the phone’s 5 megapixel camera comes with options like flash, autofocus and so on to capture the best possible videos. HTC has revealed that the phone will be available with T-Mobile contract. You can also enjoy the phone without a contract options by buying it outright.

HTC has launched a new phone that is being billed as the ultimate in the gaming smartphone segment. The new HTC 7 Trophy has a number of features that would certainly make sure that it lives up to the name.

The new HTC 7 Trophy features a touch screen that measures up at a hugely impressive 3.8 inches. The screen is also capacitive and has a 480 x 800 resolution that will make many a phone to go red with envy. The phone has a 5 megapixel colour camera that has options like auto focus and flash to make even the most novice of mobile phone users look good at taking pictures. The camera also has built-in scenes like candlelight, landscape, and portrait that would easily match the environment of your subject, letting you take even better pictures.

The phone has 8 GB of internal storage that lets you store your songs and movies. The phone has Dolby Mobile and SRS surround sound technologies in it, and these offer excellent virtual surround sound. The phone supports audio formats like m4a, .m4b, .mp3 and .wma. The gaming experience offered by this phone is second to none. This is because the phone comes with Xbox LIVE integration that lets you stay in touch with your friends and compete with them over your favourite Xbox game titles on the phone itself. This means that you are never far away from the ultimate gaming experience.

The HTC 7 Trophy has features like GPS that offers free navigation using the Bing Maps application. The phone runs on a 1300 mAh battery that provides talk time of nearly 400 minutes in GSM mode. The phone is expected to be released later this week and will be available on a two year £30 a month deal.

The great marketing maxim that you shouldn’t be tinkering with a successful product goes out the window with the HTC Desire Z. The Taiwan-based leader in smartphones HTC did just that. It took its highly successfully HTC Desire released this March and decided it can reach more markets by adding a full QWERTY keyboard in a slider form factor.

HTC didn’t sacrifice much of the slim profile of the Desire as its QWERTY version has a 14.2mm profile making it one of the slimmest QWERTY sliders on the market.

Feature Desirability

Apart from that, HTC traded the beefy muscles of the older Desire’s 1GHz Snapdragon for a less endowed by just as capable 800 MHz Qualcomm MSM7230 under the hood. At least you now get the latest Android v2.2 to run the HTC Desire Z. You give some, you lose some, right?

But for all intents and purposes, the two are almost identical, with the same 3.7-inch capacitive touchscreen display all the bells like proximity and accelerometer sensors, Swipe and multitouch input technologies, 480 x 800 resolution and 16 million colors. The display is S-LCD which is no less as good as the AMOLED in the first early batches of the Desire which now uses the same screens, thanks to Samsung’s inability to meet the HTC needs.

The new Desires features quad band GSM on 2G with class 32 GPRS/EDGE connectivity speeds and a dual band UMTS on 3G with HSDPA at 14.14 Mbps and HSUPA at 5.7 Mbps data speeds. Local data transfers get WiFi 802.11 b/g/n for hotspot surfing, Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP, microUSB v2.0 and an in-built GPS receiver with A-GPS.

Imaging gets a 5-megapixel shooter with autofocus, LED flash, face detection, geo tagging and video recording at 720p high definition. Mobile entertainment starts with its Stereo FM receiver with RDS, a 3.5mm audio jack and wireless A2DP stereo listening option.

HTC puts in a generous 1.5 GB of user memory coupled with a 512 MB RAM for its OS files. You also get a 32GB microSD support. A 1300 mAh Li-ion battery delivers up to 9.8 hours of call time on 2G, 6.6 hours on 3G with a standby time of 430 hours.

If the HTC Desire looks and seems like a Smarpthone you’ve already seen before, it’s because it actually is. The newest Smartphone from HTC is actually a revamped model of the HTC Google Nexus One which saw its release in January of this year. The only difference between the two is that the Desire has been blessed with the immaculate Sense user interface. In this regard, the Desire definitely makes more sense than its Nexus counterpart. Forgive the play on words. We just couldn’t resist it.

Mirror Image

One of the reasons why the Nexus One was so impressive was because of its sizable high resolution touch screen display. At 3.7” and with a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels, it remains to be one of the baddest in the business. The same holds true for the HTC Desire which has the exact same AMOLED capacitive touch screen. The dimensions of the two are almost exactly the same as is their weight – a virtual mirror image.

More of the Same

In terms of their features, it’s more of the same for the HTC Desire and the Nexus One. Voice and data connectivity options are similar and so are their built-in cameras which are both at 5-Megapixels. An expandable external memory of 32GB, a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, and an A-GPS-capable GPS receiver are some of the other prominent features shared by these two Smartphones, and they’re definitely impressive features, especially considering how reasonable the HTC Desire deals are.

Sensing a Difference

While both handsets have the famed Android OS on board (both have the Eclair), what allows the HTC Desire to stand out is its Sense UI. The proprietary HTC user interface enhances the already impressive Google mobile OS as it integrates a lot of new features on the Desire. One of the shortcomings of the Nexus One was its lack of widget and application power. With the Desire, all these criticism can be thrown out of the window.

The newest Android handset from HTC is heading straight to the UK via Vodafone. This new Android smart phone has spent its development under the radar only to later surprise the tech community with its impressive features and practical hardware setup. With this announcement, at least four network operators will be offering the Android handset (T-Mobile, 3 UK and Virgin Mobile). With this level of competition we should be able to enjoy some pretty nice HTC Wildfire deals upon release.

Going in a different direction than the HTC Desire, the Wildfire is practically a low to mid range smart phone that still brings plenty of useful features on the table. While users cannot expect the same speed and performance that is normally found in other of the recently launched Android handsets, we can at least expect the Wildfire to be significantly cheaper than its Snapdragon bearing predecessors. Social networking is a major feature on this Android handset as it has integrated features for Facebook and Twitter.

The device also comes with a 3.2 capacitive touch screen with an accelerometer and multi touch, a 5 mega pixel camera (with flash and autofocus), a 3.5 mm audio jack and of course, support for WiFi, Bluetooth, AGPS, microSD cards and more. Hopefully, when the Android 2.2 Froyo update for the HTC Desire comes out this coming June 23, an update for the Wildfire will also be released (version 2.2 of the Android OS brings native support for Adobe Flash and AIR as well as tethering and other useful features).

Vodafone has already released the new plan details for this handset. According to Vodafone’s official website, the Wildfire is free with the two year 15 GPB monthly tariff which gives users 300 minutes of talk time and free texts -but no internet data allowance. While so many networks have already confirmed the device (and the price as well), it appears that nobody can still give a definitive release date for the Android smart phone.

The all new HTC Wildfire is for those people who want great personalisation from the Android platform, but who’s budget doesn’t quite stretch to the £400+ that is required to get hold of a Desire. Yes the HTC Wildfire offers a more reasonably priced option and should be available for free on a contract priced between £15 and £20 per month. This is where we believe that HTC and Google can steal a march on their rivals, Apple. Apple has the premium marketplace all but sewn up, but we reckon that it is the budget handsets where the battle will be won and lost. You see there are an awful lot more users who can afford £100 on a handset that can afford £400+ and the more users that an operating system has, the more developers want to develop apps for it. I’m sure you can see where we are going with this, let’s just say that whoever wins the budget battle for OS supremacy, will win the overall APP battle and our reckoning is that Android may just take it in 2010.

While Apple may be the older company, HTC has been in the mobile industry longer. Before the iPhone, HTC had already made a name for itself with its smart devices and Pocket PCs. They even attracted the attention of Microsoft who turned HTC into a partner in developing Windows Pocket PC.

When HTC grew, they ventured into the mobile phone industry where they became a partner for Google’s Android OS. They made the HTC Dream –the first Android smart phone, and the Nexus One –the first Google branded Android device. It is because of these that the recently claimed lawsuit from Apple accusing HTC of patent infringement comes as an insult to HTC’s long history in the industry.

A few days ago, Peter Chou stated that “HTC disagrees with Apple’s actions and will fully defend itself. HTC strongly advocates intellectual property protection and will continue to respect other innovators and their technologies as we have always done, but we will continue to embrace competition through our own innovation as a healthy way for consumers to get the best mobile experience possible.”

The HTC CEO also said “From day one, HTC has focused on creating cutting-edge innovations that deliver unique value for people looking for a smartphone. In 1999 we started designing the XDA and T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition, our first touch-screen smartphones, and they both shipped in 2002 with more than 50 additional HTC smartphone models shipping since then.”

The lawsuit covers 20 patents for hardware and software, focusing on HTC mobile phones that use the Android OS. Google has also reacted by stating that they will stand behind and support HTC in this case. Despite not being directly involved, Google recognizes the lawsuit as Apple’s own tactics against the Android OS.

For more information about HTC’s defense against Apple, go to ZD Net.

The new HTC Legend mobile device has definitely caused quite a stir in the industry, and it has been one of the most keenly-awaited devices to make its while its eventual release a little later this year cannot come soon enough for some. Insiders have speculated that the Legend may well step into the shoes of one of its forebears, the HTC Hero, which many believed to be an excellent phone in its own right. It must be said also that the Legend also compares very favourably indeed to another of HTC’s new releases, the Desire – another big head-turner at Geneva’s mobile phone conference.

In terms of basic aesthetics the Legend does certainly beat the Desire in the fashion and style stakes, with its Apple Mac-like manufacture from one single block of aluminium. On the Macbook this was referred to as a unibody design and it also serves the HTC Legend very well indeed.  The Legend’s overall finish is also pleasing to both the eye and the hand as was the Macbook’s, and this elevates it even further ahead of the Desire in terms of fashionable desirability.

According to HTC’s marketing gurus the design concept behind the Legend is ‘hidden power’, which aims to produce a device that can combine both design and function in one handset. Certainly the unibody design goes a long way to fulfilling this vision as it does away with the need for separate frames and covers. This is not only a good thing stylistically but also with regards to the phone’s functions and features as it affords that much more room and space for components is available for the phone itself. For this reason the Legend can pull further away still from the Hero as it is able to incorporate an extremely vibrant 3,2-inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen that is truly wonderful to behold, although it is still a little smaller that the larger screen seen on the Desire.

The Legend has made further enhancements over its predecessors as well, including a much better and more functionally designed keypad. There is also a navigation button rather than a trackball, which is very much in keeping with the new industry norm as trackballs are really fading from fashion due to their propensity to break. It may well be, however, that users will not even ever need to use the navigation button due to the fact that the touchscreen is so wonderfully responsive.

Two more excellent features of the Legend are its Android 2.1 operating system and the overlaid HTC Sense UI which appears somewhat similar to the Sense first seen on the Hero. It has, however, been significantly enhanced on the Legend with a whole raft of new features. One of the central new features is the Leap view, which allows the user to see every open operating screen and easily navigate between them with just a pinch of the finger.

The Legend also runs the useful Friend Stream which combines such oft-used social networking sites as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr in one single stream. Due to this you now no longer need to follow your contacts over several different platforms, although you can still receive separate feeds-it’s just that you can receive them in one place – very useful for the internet socially inclined.

The back of the Legend houses the almost ubiquitous 5-megapixel camera with its integral LED flash – great for snaps in a wide range of lighting conditions. The connectivity of the Legend is also very good, and wireless connectivity is also afforded through HSDPA, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. For those interested in getting one of their own the Legend should grace store shelves with is presence this April, so be sure to be the first in line to get your hands on it yourself if you want to latest in HTC’s subtle yet stylish power.

The HTC Photon was one of the mobile devices revealed last year when the HTC 2010 roadmap was leaked. Included in the document are the HTC Bravo and HTC Legend; two of today’s much awaited upcoming Android smart phones. There were three more Android devices in the roadmap as well as three Windows Mobile smart phones. The HTC Salsa, Tide and Buzz are various mid range Android phones while the HTC Photon, Trophy and Tera are business-centric Windows Mobile devices.

It is surprising to know that HTC has already resumed work on the Photon. Originally, the Photon was meant to be using the old Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system to be coupled with the HTC TouchFlo user interface which would make the OS compatible with the touch screen display. Now, it has been reported that the Photon would be using the newly unveiled WinMo 6.5.3 Maldives operating system.

What sets 6.5.3 Maldives apart is that it has been made to be used with capacitive touch screen displays with its finger-friendly user interface. So far, it has not been announced if HTC will continue to use the TouchFlo UI skinning.

The HTC Photon is reported to be running the Qualcomm MSM7227 CPU clocked at the speed of 600 MHz. It will also have a 5 mega pixel camera, a 3.2 inch capacitive touch screen and a new name: HD Mini. While the Photon is already confirmed, it has yet to be announced if the other two WinMo phones, the Trophy and the Tera will also be released this year.

Oddly enough, the Photon is pretty much a mini version of the HD2. The HTC HD2 is one of the most successful WinMo 6.5 devices (though it got pulled out of Vodafone’s 2010 lineup).

Read more about the HTC Photon aka, HD Mini, at Mobile Choice UK.

The HTC Smart phone is one the handset manufactures newest offerings. It will be different from most of the mobile phones manufactured by HTC. For one, this phone won’t be a typical smartphone.  Instead, it will run on the Qualcomm’s Brew Mobile Platform. The features and specs also won’t be as impressive as many of the other HTC phones.  There has been some talk that the Smart handset is being designed for a newer user who will hopefully upgrade to one of the company’s more expensive phones after they become acquainted with the Smart, which is a akin to a introductory phone.

The Smart has 256MB of RAM and ROM memory. Individuals can add more via the phone’s microSD card slot.  It has a pretty small display at 2.8 inches which comes with a resistance screen. The phone has a 3.0 megapixel camera, which isn’t bad.  There are handsets on the market with less impressive megapixels.  The processor on the phone is about average at 300 MHz.

The HTC Smart is scheduled to be released in Europe and in Asia sometime during the Spring of this year (2010) which is just a few short months away.  No price has been reported for the phone or any hint of what HTC Smart contracts might be on offer. However, that information should be forthcoming and will probably be announced or leaked just prior to the phone’s release.

Overall, the HTC Smart is a pretty decent phone. It is not as good as some of the other HTC mobiles like the HD2, but it also won’t be as expensive.  Individuals will be able to purchase the Smart during the first or second quarter of 2010. The company has announced that it will launch in Europe and Asia first. There has been no word regarding whether or not it will be released elsewhere and when that might occur. Until such information is given, the only thing known for sure is that the phone will be available on those continents.