The music player has few frills and the trackball control takes a bit of getting used to. You need to nudge it left or right to scroll through your tracks and it's easy to go too far. The sound through the supplied headphones wasn't as bad as we'd feared it might be, with a surprising amount of air and space, though they're very light on bass. There's no graphic equaliser to adjust the sound, nor is there a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Messaging to the fore, not multimedia
The Snap comes with A-GPS and Google Maps on board, both of which worked fine, and this being a Windows Mobile handset, you can add satnav software from any of the main manufacturers. Without a big touchscreen though, it's likely to be more hindrance than help if you try to use it while driving.
Office Mobile comes pre-loaded, allowing you to view PowerPoint docs, and edit Word and Excel files, though not create them. Windows Live - aka Bing - is also present as an alternative search option to Google, should you feel the need.
The battery offers the same capacity as the one we've seen recently on the Touch Pro 2 - and a bit more than the Touch Diamond 2 - but the smaller screen means it can keep running for longer – a good three days of moderate use in our case, which is pretty good going for a smartphone.
Verdict
The HTC Snap looks solidly professional but its rubberised plastic casing is extremely tactile and its Qwerty keyboard is a joy to use. Its focus is clearly on messaging, and it keeps the price down by placing its multimedia capabilities on the sidelines. Browsing and PIM functions are functional rather than fun, but the Snap is a solid little slimline, mid-price workhorse that's likely to find its way into many a pinstriped suit pocket. ®
More Smartphone Reviews...
Nokia N97 |
Acer Tempo F900 |
HTC Touch Pro 2 |
HTC Vodafone Magic |
HTC Snap
COMMENTS
No Opera?
You do know why right? Opera Mobile 9+ doesn't work without a touch screen! The enrite control system is designed for touchscreen phones.
From Poor-man's iPhones to Poor man's Blackberries
You've got to love HTC. After fighting Samsung, LG and the rest in conning people into buying something which looks vaguely like an iPhone but lacks the support, the features or the apps of the iPhone platform, they're now trying the same trick with Blackberries. Having owned numerous HTC phones before I owned a blackberry 8800 and numerous iPhones, HTC have little innovation, they copy. Badly. Their devices feel cheap and insubstantial often decently specced, but always always let down by ridiculously antiquated software. Even if you don't intend to install third party apps on the device and go back to the year 2000 in OS usability with windows Mobile, the HTC software is simply outdated.
That and you'll very rarely get updates if their current behaviour is like their previous, they aren't even up to the standard of Blackberry updates regularity, let alone approaching Apple. New week, new model is the way it is. Windows Mobile seems great on paper, until you try to use it. Tmakes you glad a certain company innovated, or we'd still be stuck using Wimo!
So pretty much an E71
But with Wincephone software.
I am not even sure the hardware looks as nice...the E71 is almost perfect in that regard.
I think I will stick with tried and trusted S60 thanks...it has it's flaws but at least it tries to be a phone first. Every wincephone I have sampled (various HTC devices up to the Touch Diamond) have had horrible stalls, crashes, out of sync sound events and massive usability issues
About the only thing that will get me giving up the 71 is when Orange wake up and start offering an Android phone.
Yawn
Said it before - not interested in winphones.
Why is the same hardware not available with a choice of OS?
