HTC, Radar Love

Let’s say hello to HTC Titan’s little brother, HTC Radar. Even if it doesn’t have its big brother’s advanced skills, this fellow will struggle to fulfill your needs and I assure you that it will succeed. You’ll see why in the following review.

Key features:

3.8" 16M-color capacitive LCD touchscreen of WVGA resolution (480 x 800 pixels)
Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
Dual-band 3G with HSDPA (7.2 Mbps) and HSUPA (2Mbps)
Windows Phone 7 operating system
1GHz Scorpion CPU, Adreno 205 GPU, Snapdragon chipset
512MB RAM, 512MB ROM
5 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash, geotagging and a hardware shutter key
720p video recording @ 30fps
8GB of built-in storage
Standard 3.5mm audio jack
Standard microUSB port (charging)
Dolby Mobile and SRS sound enhancement
Wi-Fi b/g/n
Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP
Accelerometer for screen auto rotation
Office document editor
Facebook integration and cloud services
Built-in A-GPS receiver
Stereo FM Radio with RDS
Comes with HTC Hub and exclusive HTC apps

Full specs here.


In its box, you’ll find a microUSB cable, a detachable charger and the one-piece headset. No microSD card and that’s because Windows Phone doesn’t support them yet, but at least the phone has an internal storage of 8 GB, which is quite enoughif you ask me.

I hope I didn’t upset the Radar when I called it “little”, for it proves itself to be quite a tough guy. And it isn’t little at all, if you come to think about it’s dimensions: 115.2 x 58.6 x 9.3 mm and with a weight of 137 g, this phone is far from being delicate, but don’t imagine a beast either. It’s a very nicely built device and the aluminum unibody makes it look great. On the back, it has two parts made of  a rubberized plastic. I must say that HTC used only the best materials when designing this phone, I’ve carried it for more than a few days in my pocket next to other stuff like keys, without any protection, and it doesn’t have a scratch. It’s solid, compact and comfortable in the hand and I, for myself, couldn’t ask more from a phone. “Heavy is good, heavy is reliable!” – well, it’s not actually like that, but I’m not the biggest fan of light weights either.
The front houses the 3.8 inches S-LCD screen with a WVGA resolution and Gorilla Glass protection. The viewing angles are good and the sunlight legibility is also very decent, so you’ll surely like the phone from this point of view. Above the display, you’ll come across some proximity and ambient light sensors and a secondary 1.3 MP camera, used for video-calling. Beneath the screen, there are three capacitive keys: back, home and search.

On the phone’s left side is the microUSB port and on the right side, you’ll find the volume rocker and camera button. The top holds the 3.5mm audio jack and the Power/Lock key. The bottom hosts only the mouthpiece.
The phone comes packed with Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, a very simple interface which comes with better support for social networking and multitasking. HTC Radar brings a very capable hardware package, that includes a 1 GHz Scorpion CPU, Adrena 205 GPU, 512 MB of RAM and 512 MB of ROM. Not bad, huh ?
In terms of telephony, the phone does a very good job, as the call quality is great, the voices being loud and clear for all the parties and the call reception is as well. The phone provides an interesting and very cute, I must say, application: the People Hub. It’s like a phonebook which has the contacts replaced with people’s profiles. When looking at a contact’s profile, you can call him or her, text, write on wall and so on. You also have voice dialing and support for video-calling.
You’ll have a satisfying experience when messaging, as the phone’s keyboard is very comfortable to use.
When it comes to connectivity, the phone comes loaded with support for Wi-Fi b/g/n with DLNA, quad-band GSM/GPRS/ EDGE, dual-band 3G with HSPA (14.5 Mbps downlink and 5.76 Mbps uplink) and stereo Bluetooth 2.1.

You’ll enjoy browsing on the HTC Radar. It uses an upgraded Internet Explorer as the standard browser that works great: the pages are looking nice and they’re loaded very fast and you have the feature for multiple tabs. No Flash support, though.
The phone’s 5MP camera comes takes pictures at a maximum resolution of 2560 x 1920 and comes loaded with a 28mm wide-angle f2.2 lens, a back-side illuminated sensor, autofocus and a LED flash. Oh, and geo-tagging. You also have settings for scene modes, effects, contrast, saturation, ISO, sharpness and others. The image quality is very good, as the colors look great and are the same with the real ones. The video camera shoots in 720p at 30fps and also provides a big amount of settings and offers good video quality.
The music player supports formats like MP3, WAV, WMA and eAAC+ and is kind of simple, lacking an equalizer, but the phone compensates that with a really good audio quality.

You’ll like watching videos on the HTC Radar, but it only supports MP4, WMW. You can convert AVI files to MP4 on your computer, using a software called Zune.
You have Office support for viewing and editing Word and Excel documents. PowerPoint files can only be viewed, you can’t edit them. For other applications, you have the Windows Phone Marketplace, so feel free to get anything you want.

The phone also provides a GPS receiver with A-GPS support and uses Bing Maps for navigation. You can find out about tourist attractions, for example, with a new feature called Local Scout.
The HTC Radar comes with a 1520mAh battery that will strongly endure more than a day of heavily usage, so you can browse, take pictures, play games and listen to music all day long without concerning about the battery, because it cares about its life and will hold on to it as long as it can.

My final words are that this phone’s going to be your best friend if you’re after a smart and good looking device. The simple, but pretty and well-built design hosts a “brainy” package, with a big amount of skills. I’m talking about the powerful hardware, fancy phonebook, good image, video and audio quality and the really efficient browser. Oh, and let’s not forget about the battery, which is definitely a fighter. All of these features are proof that this phone is trying to make you happy.

 You can get your own HTC Radar on a monthly deal here.

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HTC HD2, Power Puff Dragon!

I think that HTC’s HD2 is the fastest smartphone of its year of apparition, with the largest capacitive display you could have found on the market at that time and with one of the best designs in the world of modern smartphones. A true monster  pocket-PC, powered  by a Snapdragon, Godzilla meets  Bruce Lee, drop of the hat,this HTC is Rock and Roll:

Key features


• Huge 4.3" 65K-color WVGA glass-covered capacitive touchscreen
• Multi-touch input
• Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional OS with Sense UI
• Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 1 GHz CPU and 448MB RAM
• Quad-band GSM support
• 3G with HSDPA 7.2Mbps
• Wi-Fi connectivity
• Built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS support
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• 5 MP autofocus camera with dual LED flash and touch focus
• VGA video recording at 30fps
• microSD card slot
• Standard microUSB port and Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
• Standard 3.5mm audio jack
• Great audio quality
• MS Office Mobile document editor
• Opera 9.5 web browser
• YouTube client, Facebook and Twitter integration
• Excellent video playback performance
• Good battery life

For full specs, you can visit here.



In its box, you’ll find the charger, microUSB cable, headset, 2GB microSD card, software CD and, guess what ? A phone covering! Isn’t that cute ?

In addition to the ROM update, HTC has released two official updates (one for correcting problems arising in pictures, and one for some problems with SMS)  plus an unofficial one on XDA, where the 3D hardware acceleration is enabled for playing games.

HTC HD2 has a very cool, almost dramatic design that almost screams “Hey, look at me, look at me!”
The company keeps an eye on the industry trends and preferences or user specifications and produces the right, catchy and attractive models. Given that they no longer produce models exclusively dedicated to the business area and is offering Android devices too, HTC is careful that its smartphones please the general public in terms of appearance, that proves to be well finished and covered with quality materials.

The large 4.3 inches screen covers almost the entire surface of the phone. The remaining room is taken by five control buttons (call, home, menu, back and end call). They don’t stand out in relief and if you want to identify them by touch (say when it's dark and you want to use the device without looking at it), you'll have some problems. I'd say they are too small compared to the size of the screen and the whole device. It is still a matter of personal taste. They’re constructed from a black plastic and fit perfectly in the frontal part of the HTC HD2.

It is also immediately noticed that HTC HD2 is very thin. 11 mm is truly an achievement when you consider the old models of HTC. Or even in comparison with Touch Diamond2 (13.7 mm). The back of the HTC HD2 reserves another pleasant surprise: a combination of rubberized plastic for the external areas and a metal cap that gives a sense of style, elegance and solidity. And let’s not forget about the 5 megapixel camera with dual flash and external speaker!

The surface on the HD2’s backside is not flat. It has a curved aspect that contributes to a better hand grip. At the same time, the curve can be a disadvantage if you mostly use the device on your desk:  because of its curved shape, it will swing from left to right and will have to be kept fixed by your hand. Again, a matter of preference.

The design ends with the volume control button positioned on the left side. Very easy to use, easy to identify on the case and, though it’s also kind of concealed. The charger port and the audio one can be found at the bottom of the device in the center. They’re next to eachother, but the separating distance is perfect for allowing you to use it without problems.

The 3.5 mm jack seems to have become the standard one for HTC. I’m glad to see this. What I don’t like is the option of using a microUSB slot for connecting / charging instead of miniUSB. It is very clear that they opted for the microUSB to gain space and thus can create a thin device. However, I would have preferred a miniUSB.

On the hardware side, the HTC HD2 stands very well. A 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and a combination of 512 MB ROM and 448 MB RAM (which could smoke any PC from ten years ago in terms of hardware power) plus a microSD slot. This combination is the dream of every IT and gadgets enthusiast.  It also has a proximity sensor (can turn the screen off during a call) and a sensor for ambiental light (the brightness automatically adjusts depending on the amount of light in the area), plus the accelerometer, made only for optimized HTC applications.

The HTC HD2 comes with a WiFi receiver(802.11 b / g), aGPS support, quad band GSM, 3G/GPRS/EDGE connectivity and compass.

Let’s talk about the camera. It’s a 5MP camera with autofocus and the ability to change the area of focus by touching the desired object, plus two LEDs doing their job quite well in lower light conditions. The picture quality is fine when the light conditions are proper. The only problem is that the dual flash is way too bright, this issue can be quite disturbing at some point. Your dog may bite you when trying to take its picture in an artificial-illuminated environment.

The same happens with the option of shooting. You can film very fine at 30 fps with 640 x 480. Altogether, HD2’s camera has a limited performance.

Who needs an mp3 player when this phone does such a wonderful job ? The music sounds very nice on this phone, you’ll be pleased. I know I was. Another “pro” on the list is that the 3.5mm jack allows you to use your favorite headset.
The 1230mAh battery lasts longer than 24 hours even if you browse, take pictures and do all sorts of phonelife-sucking stuff.

Overall, this phone’s totally worth it, you won’t be disappointed of it, I give you that. Way to go, HTC!

For a monthly contract deal on HTC HD2, please visit us here.

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