HTC HD2 Review
In brief
The HTC HD2 is a smartphone full of functionality and great features, along with an impressively large touchscreen.
Look and Feel
Given that the touchscreen measures 4.3 inches, it makes sense that this is one of the HTC HD2’s dominating features. Unlike the original
HD phone which has a 3.7 inch resistive screen, the HD2’s screen is both responsive to touch and the largest of any phone on the market currently.
The touchscreen has a multi-touch function which allows you to type on two areas at once, making for rapid writing. You can type texts, emails or enjoy instant messaging using the full on-screen QWERTY keyboard, which is the same as the one on the
HTC Hero and is so easy to use even when the phone’s in portrait mode.
You can zoom in on a picture by just pinching the screen between your two fingers. The image quality is impressive and all the icons are a good size, displayed in sharp definition. The HTC HD2 makes surfing the web, looking through photos, watching videos or viewing Google Maps a pleasure thanks to the bright colours, high resolution and big screen.
The phone weighs 157g which is light when you consider the size of the screen. And the phone does not feel big – HTC have managed to sink the screen within a smooth and black, rounded back, frame. The phone only has one row of buttons on the front and fits comfortably into most pockets.
The HTC HD2 has support for many applications through the Windows Marketplace for Mobile and you can set up shortcuts to your favourites. The home screen has six icons and a big clock – if you want to you can simply slide the clock upwards, leaving room for six more applications. You may need the extra space as the phone comes with pre-loaded features including social networking applications (Facebook, Twitter and YouTube), GPS and Google Maps, MyPhone and Pocket Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and PDF viewer).
MyPhone is a free service and offers you peace of mind as you can back up all your files and documents online. You can view them from anywhere which gives you the freedom to work from your phone, back up your work, and then continue where you left off on your home or office computer. It also means your files are safe should you ever lose your phone.
Special features
The inside of the phone is as impressive as the outside. The HTC HD2 has a 1GHz Snapdragon processor – first seen on the
Toshiba TG01 – which makes it super fast for using the internet, accessing applications and running a few features at once such as the music player and Facebook.
The really special feature of the HTC HD2 is, of course, its 4.3 inch touchscreen which offers a responsive, colourful and vast platform to explore all that this smartphone houses. Although it can occasionally be slightly confusing having the HTC Sense interface running alongside the Windows Mobile interface – for example, emails arrive on the home screen but are viewed in full on the Windows Mobile email viewer – you can live with this because of all the other great features of this phone.