HTC Pure Review -AT&T- Inexpensive And Great On Features
Sum and Substance:
Thumbs Up:
Windows Mobile 6.5, 5 mega pixel camera, inexpensive.
Thumbs Down:
Lack of 3.5 mm phone jack, touch screen is resistive and not capacitive.
Inside the Trunk:
Technology:
WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM
Band:
WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Phone design:
Candy bar
Caller ID:
Yes
Other features:
GPS receiver
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
Wireless Interface
IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g, Bluetooth 2.0 EDR
Application Software
Microsoft ActiveSync, File Explorer, Windows Media Player Mobile, Microsoft Office Mobile, Microsoft Internet Explorer Mobile
Additional Features
Accelerometer, TouchFLO 3D touch-screen
Operating System
Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional
Messaging Services
Windows Live Messenger (MSN Messenger)
Other features for messaging and data
Mobile Email, GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates For Global Evolution), Internet Browser, HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access), Zip Manager support, PDF support, Microsoft Word support, Macromedia Flash support, Microsoft PowerPoint support, RSS feeds, Microsoft Excel support
Camera
5 megapixels
Display
3.2 inch TFT LCD display, 800 x 480 pixels resolution, Ambient light sensor
Connector
1 x Data port – 11 pin HTC ExtUSB
Razzle Dazzle:
HTC has always amazed us with sexy looking phones in the past and this one too continues the tradition. The HTC Pure has just four buttons on the bottom of the screen and there is a zoom bar for going in and out for photographs and web pages. Apart from that there are no physical buttons on the screen which make the phone look very pretty. The back of the HTC Pure has a cheap plastic feel which attracts a lot of finger prints, other than this the phone looks good. The phone will sit very comfortably in your palm and will fit in tightest of jeans thanks to the slim sleek look.
Inside Dope:
HTC pure is the first mobile phone to come in packaged with the new Windows Mobile 6.5 which promises a better OS with more on features and applications. The web browser of the phone is more powerful and better than earlier HTC phones but it still leaves a lot to be desired. Other useful services include Microsoft application store and a backup service called My Phone. If your phone gets lost or stolen you can remotely erase or wipe the data on the phone but it will remain safe on the company’s website thanks to the My Phone feature. Browsing has been improved on this phone and so is the multimedia but it is still not at par with what other players give in the market. But when it comes to intra competition we would say that this is the best HTC phone.
The display of the HTC Pure is WVGA and it is 3.2 inch big which gives you a display of 400X800. The size and the resolution go well with the phone and give you lot of room for icons when you go to the menu of the phone. The WVGA screen gives you a better display and the screen is bright enough so you can read the text clearly and photos and videos look good on it too.
The screen is resistive; we would have preferred a capacitive touch screen. The difference between the two is that though they both are touch screen types, a resistive touch screen needs a stylus for accuracy and you can use a finger to touch the screen when it comes to capacitive touch screen. This doesn’t mean that resistive screen cannot be used with your finger; it is just that your touches might not register accurately. The finger is quite thick as compared to a thin stylus. The screen still doesn’t support multi touch.
The HTC Pure has a built in accelerometer but again we were disappointed because it doesn’t support all the applications. It will work for applications where you need it the most like video, e-mail, photos and web pages.
Accelerometer does work in keyboard which will make messaging enthusiasts happy. The keyboard is good and both the portrait mode and landscape mode have the QWERTY layout, some mobile phones just have a numeric keypad in the portrait mode and you get a full fleded QWERTY keyboard only in the landscape mode.
Typing on the HTC Pure is good as long as you are composing short messages to friends. But the keyboard will start getting on your nerves you use it for web browsing or for other applications where you have to type a lot.
The HTC Pure doesn’t come in with a 3.5 mm phone jack but it does give you an adapter in the pack with which you can attach your own set of phones. The adapter is a little big and carrying it around would be a little difficult. We wouldn’t recommend this phone if you want a great music player, stick with iPhone for music till HTC improves on multimedia.
The HTC Pure comes with an USB cable, AC adapter, head phone audio adapter, reference material, extra stylus and a disc which contains the phone software. The sides of the phone have volume rocker, power button is at the top and there is a Mini-USB port/power connector/jack for head phones at the bottom.
The menu of the HTC Pure has a new honey comb layout and it is pretty to look at. The honey comb layout is user friendly so you don’t have much fuss using it. Microsoft has added a couple of shortcuts in the menu of the phone like search, MSN Money, Microsoft MyPhone and Windows Marketplace. The big resolution of the screen lets you see a lot of icons at a single time on the screen but all the icons on the menu don’t fit and you will have to scroll up and down which is quite sleek. If the most frequently used icon is at the bottom of the screen and you need it at the top all you have to do is long press that icon and click on the “move to top” option.
One of the new features of the Window Mobile 6.5 is the new lock screen, it shows you time right on the screen, date, upcoming appointments, missed calls and messages even when your phone is locked. If there are multiple notifications for you and touching icon of the lock gives you a drop down box which contains the information of how many calls you have missed and also the messages. If you have multiple notifications then it will show on the screen. The new OS supports more touch gestures like flicking through the screen when you want to scroll through a long list of menus. This feature was first seen in iPhone and we were amazed that the icons rolled up and down according to the speed at which we flicked the screen. HTC has finally accommodated that in this phone. It makes the phone easier to access and the icons are easier to navigate.
Among the new features added by Windows in this OS the most important are Microsoft’s MyPhone backup service, Windows Marketplace for Mobile and somewhat Internet Explorer Mobile Web browser, but is still miles behind Apple’s Safari.
The touch screen of the HTC Pure gives haptic feed back which means that it vibrates to show you that the touch is registered.
We were glad to see a five mega pixel camera on the HTC Pure, upgraded from the normal 3.2 mega pixel which is usually what ships with the HTC. We were happy with the photo quality of the camera; it was better than what standard five mega pixel camera phones deliver. There are settings like ISO settings, various resolution and image-quality options, white balance, controls for brightness, plenty of tools for camera settings and flicker adjustment. There is no flash or portrait mirror. The camera can record videos as well, but it gets a little blurry. Taking pictures in bright sun light will overwhelm this camera and with no flash, pictures in low light conditions won’t good.
We tried the HTC Pure for call quality and it was good. Voices could be heard clearly but we heard a little hiss while we were on the calls from our end. The audio was nice and we could clearly hear what our friends were saying. The phone attracts a lot of background voice when you use it so you may have to speak louder so that people hear you clearly. There were also occasional echoes. On the other end people said that they didn’t hear any hiss and heard our voices clearly. There were no problems with the speakerphone either but the sound tends to distort when you push it to full volume. There is Bluetooth in the computer which means you can pair up the device with a wireless Bluetooth headset. We tried a few and the voice was clearest on the headset as compared to the speaker phone or handset.
The HTC Pure is powered by 528MHz MSM7201A processor and we had no problems of speed while we were using the applications. The phone can take multi tasking pretty well as long as you don’t test the device by opening all the applications at once. Just use what you want and you will be fine. Default browser of the mobile phone is Internet Explorer Mobile Browser. We have been trashing the browser a lot lately and quite a few improvements have been made, but it is still short of what Safari can do. With Opera tabbed browsing is easy and comfortable. Presence of Flash Lite on the computer lets you YouTube videos on the phone.
The HTC Pure supports 3G and we tested video calling on this device. The videos were quite bad and lagged a bit. The videos looked quite dark and were unclear even in day light. The phone has 3G as well as Wi-Fi so when you are out of 3G coverage area you can switch Wi-Fi if there is connectivity around.
There is no limit to how many entries you can put in the HTC Pure for contacts and the memory space is the only thing that will hold you back. A single entry takes addresses for work and home, multiple numbers, IM name, e-mail, name of the spouse, birthday, etc. When it comes to caller ID you can pair up a contact with a picture so that his flashes when he calls and you can also assign an individual ring tone to a contact. There is a contact page which lets you check out the call history, status updates of the contacts and e-mails or messages that you may have exchanged with a contact. Search is made easier, the search functions can dig through various applications on your phone like calendar, e-mails, contacts, tasks, messages and Word documents.
The HTC Pure has been made better in music department. But don’t buy this phone if you are music enthusiast. We would recommend you to stick with Apple’s iPhone because the quality is still inferior.
Nitty Gritty:
HTC Pure has been improved as compared to its predecessors thanks to the new Windows Mobile 6.5 but still needs a long way to go. Touch screen is still resistive when people have moved to capacitive; Internet explorer though improved is lot behind in competition. Music quality is not good. Buy the iPhone, let this pass.
