HTC Touch HD2 > Reviews (19)

I have been after a decent smartphone for some time and was contemplating an I-Phone, hiowever as soon as this little number showed up I knew I wanted it. Read on to discover why!

The Looks

Slightly wider and longer than the I-Phone this phone is actually a little shallower and fits nicely in the palm of the hand. The general appearance is dominated by the huge 4.3 inch screen (more about that later) On the back is a nice brushed metal battery cover which gives it a feel of quality. On the front there are 5 buttons (call, home, start, back and end call)which sit unobtrusively below the screen. The camera lens protrudes form the back of the handset and is accompanied by dual LED flash and a speaker.

Features

The HD2 features the latest Windows Mobile Operating System (6.5) and comes with the basic Office programs. The phone has an accelerometer and this is put to good use by many applications by handling changes in display fro m pportrait to landscape. The screen is also a capacitive one, allowing for multitouch and gestures such as pinch to zoom.

Under the hood if you will is a 1GHz snapdragon processor that keeps the phone working at a real pace! The phone also comes with the HTC Sense user interface that replaces the Windows interface seamlessly. this has some nice built in features including media players and photo handling. Other features that come preinstalled are Google Maps, a 15 day trial of co-pilot live Sat-Nav and a few games.

Both Opera and IE are available as web browsing options wioth both making good use of HTC's excellent On Screen Keyboard which gives you haptic feedback (a little vibration when you hit the keys) and provides some useful predictive text.

The camera is a slight let down with the 5MP sounding great but not performing as well as it might. The dual LED flash often proves too bright for indoor use making capturing low light shots difficult.

The list of features is so long that I will try to list some of the other useful ones:

Remote desktop Connection (Connect to your home PC from your phone at anytime)
Wireless Router (Use your phones data connection via your laptop)
Geotagging (GPS coords attached to pictures)
Facebook and Twitter integration (for you sociable types)
Video recording
Comprehensive Calendar
Oh yeah, it also handles phone calls and texts with nice clarity and ease.

Overall

As you can tell I quite like this phone. It does what I needed and many more things beside. The HTC User Interface is great to look at and intuitive to use, you soon find yourself brushing and stroking your way to all the apps. There is a good, and ever growing list of apps available at the Windows Marketplace. the one downside I can see with the phone is the battery life, I am having to charge every 36 hours or so in times of reasonable use, which I guess isn't too bad. The box came with a 1GBcard which increases storage capacity and also a smart leather pouch to keep the phone protected.

Reccomended

Free on a £35 a month contract over 2 years I would recommend this phone to anyone. It works really well and has the kind of feature set that both Joe Public and Joe Businessman will find appealing. A Cracking phone!