Windows Phone 7 On HTC HD7: Review

Hardware and Calling

The HTC HD7 is a solidly built device with a 4.3-inch touch-screen (480 x 80 WVGA) and a 1GHz processor.

Microsoft is keeping a tight leash on its manufacturers by imposing minimum hardware requirements, the wisdom of which seemed evident when the smartphone undertook its functions with little slowdown.

The metal edges are nicely curved, and the back panel offers enough friction to prevent the smartphone from sliding off a table or out of your hand.

Tipping the scales at 161g, the HD7 feels comfortable in one’s grip; at one point, I spent 40 minutes with the handset pressed to my ear, without wishing I had used an earpiece instead.

Sound quality for calls was crystal clear. The touch-screen itself was pleasingly responsive: not needing too hard a press, nor activating at too light a brush, but seemingly just right for navigation.

Camera

The phone comes equipped with a 5-megapixel colour camera with auto-focus and dual LED flash, and the capability for 720pixel HD video recording.

The camera is capable of adequate but unspectacular images, both indoors and out. The software offers a variety of options for shutterbugs who like to tinker with effects, resolution, flicker adjustment and the like.

Its Achilles’ heel is the mechanical shutter button on the right-hand side of the device’s exterior rim, which requires such a hard and decisive push that it frequently jostles your frame out of position.

A software-based shutter button, like the one found on Android smartphones, would have been much better. On the upside, you can easily upload your photos to the cloud.

The HD7’s back includes a kickstand integrated into the camera aperture, which clicks out to rest the smartphone in landscape mode.

Such kickstands are becoming standard-issue for more media-centric mobile devices like this one, which comes with a preinstalled Netflix application.

Video and battery issue

Quality-wise, video seemed a little muddier than on some rival devices, such as the iPhone 4 with its Retina Display and the Samsung Galaxy S with its Super AMOLED (active-matrix organic LED) screen.

As with most smartphones with plus-size screens, the HD7 also has a bit of a battery-life issue.

More than once I found myself turning off the phone by midday to conserve power, after a fairly intensive few hours of Web cruising, e-mail answering and video-watching. For most users, though, a full charge may very well see them from dawn to dusk.