One of the best phones I've used. I've tried other smartphones and this one is very good.
First I'll talk about the phone hardware then the OS.
Hardware:
Very solid phone, beautiful and large screen and the feel of the device is very nice in the hands. The rubberized material on the back lets you hold the device without dropping it. Feels pretty light and really this is the size smartphones should be; the screen is absolutely perfect.
The power button I feel is a little small it needs to be a little taller so its easier to push to power on, maybe its just the case I have it in now that makes it a little hard to push in.
Volume switches I find I accidently push these quite often and it changes the volume. While it's great they are available we should have an option to lock the volume rocker/buttons so they dont constantly keep changing the volume.
Camera button very nice and allows you to quickly take photos with a single click!! The camera does have an issue where it makes whites look pink there is supposedly a fix coming from htc to address this; appaerantly this same bug was in the htc hd2 and htc fixed that; this is a problem with htc's driver not with windows phone 7. The dual led flash on this device is fantastic and allows you to take nice bright photos at 5 megapixel obviously not the best camera in the world at 5mp but for a cell phone its really good. HTC throws in a nice flashlight app that they make which allows you to use the dual leds as a flashlight anytime you want its really really bright in a pitch black room it lights the entire room up crazy cool!
Soft buttons the buttons on the bottom of the screen back, windows and search work great and are very responsive touch them and easily take you back to the main screen, go back in an application or launch the search applications. Many times if you accidentally press these buttons while in a game you can easily drag your finger away and it wont kill the game and take you out of it very nice feature so you dont accidentally keep quitting an app/game.
The speakers on this device are pretty good; I havent had any problem at all with these speakers and they are quite loud when listening to music, playing games or on the speakerphone with someone else. The clarity is pretty good too.
The sound quality on the device is excellent when taking calls; recipients have no problem hearing you either.
Call quality/signal no problems at all with this phone; havent had a single dropped call when using this phone, you can easily switch to speaker phone at anytime by tapping on the screen and choosing the speakerphone option switching is instant and smooth.
Battery life I easily get one and 1/2 days usage out of this even with wifi and 3g on. Very good phone even if you are very busy and need to do some browsing, emailing and taking calls. Recharging the phone is pretty quick too whether you plugin to the wall or your computer. The plug is a standard micro? usb plug. It comes with an adapter that allows you to plug the standard usb end into a wall socket to get AC power too very nice design.
Software:
The new Windows Phone 7 OS is very fluid, slick and responsive no slow downs at all and smooth all the way through. Very easy to understand and use. You simply swipe down and up to choose any application you want. Need something on the 'homescreen' simply tap and hold it whether its a contact from your address book, an app, or a game you can easily organize and choose whatever you want to be on the front.
Swipe to the right and you have the entire list of all applications installed. All games are organized in the xbox live section so there is no clutter. The operating system was very well thought out and organized and is not a mess of static icons found on other smartphones.
Live tiles are excellent when the weather upates it shows you the temperature and the conditiosn outside (snowing, rain, sunny, cloudy, fog, etc). It shows you the day and month, time obviously, how many emails you have, how many voice messages you have, how many missed phone calls. You don't need to keep pressing deep down to find this information its all right there on the main screen. If you want to pull the phone out of your pocket and glance down you can do that too right on the lock screen it shows all of that information there too. Beautiful and efficient; no fiddling all day with your phone unless you really want to.
Over 4000 applications are now available in the marketplace, many of the games available are xbox live compatible full gamerscore, achievements, buddy lists, invites, sending/receiving messages all built right in. These games are not cheap ports from other smartphone os's these are all highly polished and unique games built from the ground up for Windows Phone 7. You have alot of great games like assassins creed, need for speed, deblob, frogger, guitar hero, hexic, max and the magic marker, project sunburst (crackdown), puzzle quest 2, the harvest, sims 3, uno. A ton of great indie games too like birdy bounce (like doodle jump), impossible shoota, unite. There are many more games and applications. You have great applications like Netflix you can watch full movies from your instant queue, add items to your queue. AP Mobile read about news events from around the world, ebay see your auctions, bid on items, manage you account, flixster see what movies are happening in your area, showtimes, locations, top movies, news. Built in youtube app that lets you watch youtube movies.
The built in applications like Office let you view/edit ord documents, view/edit excel documents, view powerpoint presentations, view/edit onenote, outlook view your email from multiple providers hotmail, google, yahoo, any email provider very intuitive and easy to use interface. Internet Explorer optimized and is a really good browser now; pinch to zoom and scrolling in internet explorer works perfectly, loading pages is excellent and fast no real faults at all with the new internet explorer. Music/Videos player is basically the zune interface beautiful; manages all your videos and music here and if you have a zune pass you can listen to your music from right here this works in the background too and you can play games and surf the web using this application in the background.
With so much good, what can be bad?
No multitasking for third party apps we need the ability to multi-task and choose what we want running in the background. Some apps really do need multitasking.
Copy/paste this is a minor issue but it can come in handy when copying things from a webpage/word and emailing it to others this is being added in a January OS update from Microsoft.
HTML 5 support currently internet explorer does not support html5; this really needs to be worked on immediately supposedly an update in august will add html5 too slow it needs to be added in asap.
Documents need the ability to drop documents directly from zune software and sync with office mobile.
Camera htc needs to fix the color problems with this camera; they fixed it in the htc hd2 so it shouldnt be a problem fixing it in the htc hd7.
Hands down this is one of the best initial Windows Phone 7 devices out there; this is nothing new from htc they make really exceptional hardware for Microsoft's operating systems. I hope to purchase the next HTC phone they make with Windows Phone 7 down the road ;)
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