HTC HD 2 Full Review

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The Twitter tab is new and offers Twitter functionality. While it provides a good experience for basic twitting I feel that the lack of advanced functions (lists for example) makes this tab useless and I hope that in a future update HTC will implement them.

The footprints tab offers geo-tagged photos which store additional information regarding the object in the photo. We have seen this in previous HTC devices, so nothing new here.

The settings tab is a breath of fresh air since HTC has managed to skin all the Windows Mobile settings. The settings are categorized (although I feel there are too many categories) and you can still access the old settings by pressing the Menu soft key and selecting All Settings. Two nice features that I found in the settings tab are under the Sound & Display category. These are: “Quiet ring on pickup” and “Pocket mode”. The first one detects when you pick up the phone from your desk and lowers the ringtone (since you already know you have a call) and the second one makes the ringtone louder when it detects it’s in the pocket or bag (using the light sensor) .

Other software

The lock screen is pretty basic allowing you to get the next appointment, the date, the hour and any notifications that you might have. There’s nothing new here, we have seen this on all the Windows Mobile 6.5 devices.

If we tap on the top left corner we get the start menu that we are familiar with from other devices:

The dialer has been changed to contain the conference mode (we could only get that on the Touch Pro 2 so far).

It time to talk about multimedia. We already have seen the nice photo viewer and the audio player. In addition we have a video player that handles few formats and I recommend using Core Player (which works flawlessly on the HD2). There’s a built in FM Radio player that does a good job, although I found that, when using your own headset, the player won’t succeed in scanning for stations. If you first use the included headset, the device will find the stations.

The photo camera takes decent pictures but I feel that the dual LED flash is too bright. Taking a picture is really snappy thanks to the 1 GHz processor. Unfortunately the video recording quality is quite low and for such a high end device I really wonder why we don’t get 30 fps while recording.

HTC have equipped the device with a digital compass that comes with an application to make use of it. After opening the application you can chose a place on Google Maps and the application will point you to your location.

We have an included YouTube application that does a great job and I found that it has most of the functionality I need. Just like watching a movie with Core Player, the experience of watching a YouTube video on such a large screen is a pleasure.

In regards to the GPS capabilities of this device I must say that I am impressed with how well it works. I get a fix in about 15 seconds. The device comes with Copilot Live trial preinstalled and Google Maps.

The battery lasts about 1.5 days of medium use and 1 day of heavy use. I wish the battery was at least 1500 mAh.

One last thing to add is that all the office applications have pinch to zoom enabled (including the Adobe Reader).

Conclusion

The HTC HD2 is for sure a champion. There’s simply no device out there that can beat its hardware. The 1 GHz processor, the great amount of ram, the 4.3” capacitive touchscreen, great build quality and a very well done Sense interface makes this device my first choice. The mix of the capacitive touchscreen and the flexibility of Windows Mobile is fantastic.

Since no device is perfect, the HD2 has its flaws.

The camera takes decent pictures but I wish they were better in artificial light. The video recording capabilities are poor. The fact that it has such a limited internal storage its disappointing. I got this on every single Windows Phone and I really wonder why can’t we just get something like a 1 GB of internal storage. The Marketplace application from Microsoft is a joke. Microsoft has a very strange policy regarding their application store which makes it a total failure so far, and the apps are pretty expensive. One thing that could be a problem for many is the size of the device. I feel that not everybody would want a device this big. While this is excellent for me, for others it may seem that this is not a phone anymore, but rather a tablet.

Would I recommend it? Yes I would, especially if you are a Windows Phone fan, this is the device for you. Coming from a feature phone the phone will surprise you in many ways. While I’ve seen many iPhone users converting to the HD2, I wouldn’t always recommend it to them. The fact that Windows Mobile hasn’t seen any major UI changes might make it unappealing to an iPhone user. Having said that, you need to take into account the great effort HTC has put into its Sense interface to make sure your HD2 experience is a joy.

Here is where I sign off and I’ll say that it would definitely be my main device for a long time to come.

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