HTC Desire was first announced at the Mobile World Congress 2010 and I expected this phone to arrive in the markets immediately. We had to wait seven months for it and I wonder why HTC held back this handset for so long. This phone might not have some of the greatest features that you’d yearn on a cell phone like HDMI port or front facing camera but the feature set is quite impressive and I was impressed by the performance. This is an excellent phone for U.S. Cellular whose lineup of smartphones has been lackluster of late. Till now, the only Android phone it has offered is Samsung Acclaim. In my opinion, this is the best smartphone that this carrier has came out with till now. This phone will come out in the US markets from August 27th and it will cost you $199.99 along with a two year contract and $70 mail in rebate. Looks of this phone remind me of the Nexus One and it is a good thing because the N1 is really gorgeous. The handset is 4.7 inches tall, 0.5 inch thick, 2.4 inches wide  [...]

AT&T said that they would be introducing an AT&T phone at CES 2010 and they have now come up with HTC Aria. The design is quite similar to HTC HD Mini and it based on Android 2.1. The feature set is all there and you also get to use HTC Sense's user interface. This is not the most powerful Android mobile phone in the market right now and if you yearn for power, you might want to skip this phone for Samsung Captivate – which will be arriving soon. AT&T has also blocked third party app downloads which is another bummer. However, the Aria is a good mid range smartphone and it is better than AT&T's other Android phone, the Motorola Backflip. This phone will cost you $129.99 after a $100 mail in rebate and you have to sign a two year service agreement. We think that the price is a bit high for the feature set it offers but it is not outrageous. HTC Aria has a 3.2 inches screen with resolution of 320x480 pixels. This is a bit small considering  [...]

There are a lot of smartphones coming up in the Asian and European markets and some of these have made way to the American shores as well. Reviewing such unlocked phones is a tough ask since we don’t get much of it in our labs. However, this time we got lucky with HTC Tattoo. This is an entry level smartphone with HTC Sense and Android 1.6 and it has a cool personalization option where in you can design the cover and make it one of a kind. This phone is aimed at budget users who yearn for a smartphones at the cheapest possible price. For some carriers, you get this device for free but it also comes with a few sacrifices like lack of high resolution screen. The discount too is provided only in Europe or Asia. Here in the US, this handset costs $300 and it is not heavily recommended due to the big price tag. The display of the HTC Tattoo is 2.8 inches big (diagonally) and has a tiny resolution of 240x320 pixels. This is very low as compared to what  [...]

The HTC Touch Pro has been described as “the sophisticated approach to business” by its carrier – Sprint. The smartphone really deserves this claim. It runs on Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system and its HTC 3D TouchFlo interface is the main highlight. Not only this, but the Touch Pro also offers GPS, Wi-Fi, EV-DO Rev. support, memory card slot, full QWERTY keyboard, various business tools, and so forth. The Touch Pro costs $299.99 with two-year Sprint’s contract after rebates and including $25 or higher data plan. Like its predecessor HTC Touch Diamond, the Touch Pro has attractive silver trim, rounded edges, smoky mirrored face, and sleek appearance. However, there are also some drawbacks. The smartphone performs sluggish occasionally and it is more bulky than others in its price range. You will find any dedicated camera key and 3.5mm standard headset jack. Still, the HTC Touch Pro remains one of the best and most powerful smartphones for Sprint. What’s more – it is more compact  [...]

The T-Mobile Shadow for Windows Mobile has new features and fresh look. It costs $149.99 with two-year T-Mobile contract. It looks like the more modern version of previous Shadow phone. We appreciate its advanced features like UMA support to make calls over Wi-Fi network, integrated GPS, 3G support and 2-megapixel camera. The Windows Mobile smartphone is a nice choice for T-Mobile customers. It offers simple user interface and gives a feel of regular cell phone. The smartphone looks quite attractive and eye-catching when it slowly transforms its body color. However, the T-Mobile Shadow suffers with some issues also like cheap dial-pad and sluggish performance. If you need a stylish smartphone from T-Mobile, then go for T-Mobile Shadow. 2.6 inches LCD display of the T-Mobile Shadow has 320×240 pixels (QVGA) resolution that supports 64,000 colors. The user interface casts animated effects and organizes all the applications in eight categories including personal, Outlook, text, multimedia,  [...]

HTC is offering different types of handsets with different designs to meet the needs of its consumer base. The HTC S743 smartphone is a variant of the previous the S740 and runs on the Windows Mobile operating system. It falls between HTC Touch Pro 2 and HTC Touch Diamond. The S743 features all wireless capabilities, full QWERTY keyboard and numerous productivity tools to attract the professionals. You can buy its unlocked version for $500. However, its GPS performance and call quality needs improvement. The S743 smartphone is compact and lightweight, but still manages to pack a slider QWERTY keyboard. Therefore, the S743 is a good smartphone for professionals who need the facilities of emails, appointments, and so forth. 2.4 inches LCD display of the HTC S743 has 240×320 pixels QVGA resolution that supports 65,000 colors. The smartphone only has Windows Mobile User Interface, which is not as flashy as TouchFlo UI. However, you can customize the Home Screen with options available in  [...]

HTC Hero is one of the famous smartphone in the United States and Europe. It was released in July 2009 with 528MHz Qualcomm processor, 288MB RAM, Google Android OS and Sense UI. It could not win the market due to its drawbacks such as sluggish performance, lacks support for Web browser and absence of media sync software. Now, the company has launched the success of Hero – HTC Legend. It features 600MHz processor, 384MB RAM, 5-megapixel camera, AMOLED display, Web browser with Flash support, and especially Google Android 2.1. The price and carrier details are not available till the time writing review. HTC Legend has aluminum uniform body like a high-end gaming laptop. We hope that HTC Legend will fix all of the previous issues with its upcoming release in the United States. HTC Legend has 3.2 inches capacitive touch-screen AMOLED display of HVGA (320×480 pixels) resolution that supports 16-million colors. It is better than 64K colors TFT  [...]

HTC HD2 is a complete entertainment smartphone for T-Mobile. However, we managed to get an unlocked version of the HTC HD2 for our review. The highlights of the HD2 are 4.3-inch touch-screen, HTC Sense user experience and Snapdragon 1GHz processor. HTC HD2 continues to have the same size like its predecessor, but it offers exciting  new features. The unlocked version of HTC HD2 costs around $650, but the 3G support will not be available. So, we recommend you to wait for T-Mobile to launch HTC HD2 with 3G support and mail-in rebate. HTC HD2 has 4.3 inches large capacitive touch-screen display, which has WVGA 480×800 pixels resolution. The display is sharp and vibrant. The HD2 has inbuilt accelerometer to rotate the display on tilting the phone. The accelerometer is quick and responsive. The smartphone also has proximity sensor which locks the display when you are on a phone call. It also has multi-touch support and pinch to zoom support for numerous  [...]

Verizon Wireless consumers are waiting for the release of HTC Touch Diamond. The Touch Diamond has various features and Verizon has added its services like EV-DO Rev and VZ Navigator. You will get microSD expansion slot with Touch Diamond unlike other two models. HTC Touch Diamond has three versions – unlocked version, Verizon version and Sprint Model. HTC Touch Diamond costs $299.99 with two-year contract. This cost is very high considering that this version is being old and its life cycle will end with the release of HTC Touch Diamond2. Therefore, we would not recommend HTC Touch Diamond as your smartphone. Instead, you can check out Samsung Omnia from Verizon as it costs $100 less and has better camera, larger display and faster performance. HTC Touch Diamond has 256MB flash memory and 128MB RAM with a microSD card slot that supports up to 16GB. Whereas, the Sprint Model and unlocked version has 4GB internal flash memory without any microSD  [...]

Tom Cruise? Nope, it is Touch Cruise, a GPS smartphone from HTC. It has a 2.8 inches display which gives a resolution of 320x240 pixels or 65k colors. The display is bright but isn’t as good as HTC Diamond. The LCD tends to go blank when seen in bright sunlight. We had problems checking out maps when in the car and had to turn to voice based directions for help. If the display was a bit bigger, it would have been better for map viewing. Just like other HTC phones, this model too has TouchFlo 3D which lets you browser through applications like e-mail, Web browser, multimedia and contacts. This handset is GPS-centric and hence comes with Map search and geotagging app. You get a lot of options for entering text – full QWERTY, compact QWERTY, Block Recognizer, phone keypad, etc. The built in accelerometer turns the orientation of the keyboard when you tilt the phone. We mostly used the phone in landscape mode but found that the keys were cramped  [...]