HTC HD Mini, The Little Ricer That Could

From the big HTC family comes HTC HD Mini, the HD2’s little brother. It doesn’t inherit its brother’s high performances, but still makes the parents proud, for it is a cute and smart device.


Key features

3.2" 65K-color HVGA capacitive touchscreen with multi-touch input
Compact body and bold industrial design
Windows Mobile 6.5.3 Professional OS with Sense UI
Qualcomm MSM7227 600 MHz CPU and 384MB RAM
Quad-band GSM support with dual-band HSDPA 7.2Mbps and HSUPA 2 Mbps
Wi-Fi connectivity
Built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS support
5 MP autofocus camera with touch focus
VGA video recording at 30fps
microSD card slot
Standard microUSB port and Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
Standard 3.5mm audio jack
Stereo FM radio with RDS
MS Office Mobile document editor
Opera 9.5 web browser
YouTube client, Facebook and Twitter integration
Very good audio output quality
Excellent loudspeaker performance

Full specs here.


Measuring 103.8 x 57.7 x 11.7 mm and with a 110g weight, the HD Mini is way smaller than its sibling (the difference is of about 30% percent). The processor has also been shrunk from 1GHz to a 600 MHz Qualcomm 7227, but let’s not forget that the lower resolution of the display (3.2 inches with a 320 x 480 pixels resolution) reduces the processing speed.
In its box, you’ll find the charger, which depends on the microUSB cable and the headset. No, you won’t find a memory card.
The phone comes loaded with the Windows Mobile 6.5.3 operating system. You were hoping for Android, didn’t you ? Well, you won’t be missing it, because this phone is easy to use and the HTC Sense UI makes it become very friendly.
The HD Mini is also good-looking, if you ask me. It has a well-build design, being solid, but slim and attractive.
The device has a 3.2 inches capacitive screen of HVGA resolution that offers a good image quality. But not in sunlight. Below it, you’ll come across the five capacitive controls: the call keys, home, menu and back.
On the top, you’ll see the power/screen lock button and the 3.5 mm audio jack. You’ll imediately notice the weird placing of the jack (behind the power button), so be careful when using your headset, for it might come out every now and then, depending on how you keep your phone.
On the left side is the volume rocker. The right one is bare. So, bad news if you were expecting a dedicated camera key. At the bottom, you’ll find the uncovered microUSB port. On the back, you’ll meet the unprotected camera lens which sits next to the loudspeaker grill.
The call quality is excellent for both parties and also the signal reception. You also get the smart dialing feature. HD2 Mini has support for SMS, MMS and email and does great when it comes to messaging.
The HTC HD Mini inherits its brother’s connectivity features, having support for Wi-Fi, quad-band GSM support, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, HSDPA – 7.2 Mbps, HSUPA – 2 Mbps and dual band 3G 900/2100 MHz.
The default browser on the phone is Opera, but you also have Internet Explorer, which supports Flash. In your face, Opera! But let’s not get too excited, for it’s not going to open all of the videos you want and also has problems with games. Both browsers are decent and quite fast.
The phone comes with a 5 MP autofocus camera that takes pictures at a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels, but lacks flash. The image quality is okay, but the colors are washed out, different from the real ones. You get geo-tagging support.
The camera shoots VGA videos at 30 fps. The quality isn’t very great.
The music player is really good. You have support for  MP3, AAC+, WAV, and WMA9. You also get Album art, a very nice visual interface and equalizer presets that are available but only when you’re using the headset. The audio quality is excellent.
The video player supports MP4 and 3GP files, but for DivX/XviD, you’ll need another application, for Windows Media Player isn’t the smartest of them all. Watching videos is a nice experience, though.
The 1200 mAh battery lasted for almost a day in my hands, but I really took advantage of its features, making calls, browsing, emailing and all that. If you’re not going to annoy it all day long, it will last for more that 36 hours.
Now, let’s see what the HD2 Mini has to offer when it comes to applications. For social networking, there’s Facebook and Peep (you can access Twitter through it).
You can crop your MP3 tracks and turn them into ringtones with the MP3 Trimmer. Cool or what ? You also get an YouTube application, that looks and works good and a Streaming Media manager.
You also get a GPS receiver with A-GPS support and Google Maps. For navigation, you also get a version of CoPilot Live 8, but only for 15 days.
For viewing, editing or creating Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, you’re given the full Microsoft Office suite and for PDF documents, there’s Adobe Reader LE. All four viewers support pinch-zooming.
My final words about this fellow are that it brings great joy in the family, making its HTC mum and dad be very proud of their younger son. Even if it’s not as smart, as the HD2, it still provides all of the features you’ll be needing and, besides that, it’s way better looking. Altogether, you’ll enjoy using this phone, it’s definitely worth it.

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