HTC HD2 Windows Phone (T-Mobile)

HTC HD2 is a wonderful phone March 28, 2010

Reviewer:  Justin P. Bartels "J Bama"  (Miami, FL) -

Let me start by saying I have been a T-Mobile customer since 2003. I have owned several Samsung handheld non smart phones, the T-Mobile Dash, First Gen Iphone unlocked on T-Mobile, The T-Mobile G1 and now the HDC HD2. All of my friends have Iphones, but I will never use ATT again because of their customer service (Cingular 2003). This phone is top notch and absolutely wonderful.I've been wanting a fully functional business, media phone for the past few years. The G1 was great, the Keyboard was so nice I really just loved it, but I couldn't pass up a phone with a 1 GHZ processor, it is so awesome.

Pros -
The Screen is 4.3 inches and the resoultion is 480x800. The battery life is much better than the G1 and does last all day. Camera has flash, a really nice touch and the pictures look great. The camcorder also has a light. E-Mail setup was the easiest I have had on an HTC device and worked right away. 16GB card right out of the box is a nice touch, I've put 8 full length movies and about 1,000 songs on the device right now. I used the Telenav turned by turn device and it was solid. There is also an FM radio, I will enjoy this when I go to sporting events, since I can get the baseball games on the FM station. You can get a subscription to Mobile TV, but for myself I've been using Sling Mobile and it works over 3g so I can watch all my hundreds of DirecTV shows. I don't believe the Iphone version allows you to use the 3g version of sling, and it's not available for android phones yet. As far as a Phone, I like the facebook intergration and pictures with the contacts, volume is very solid and it is easy to talk to people.

Cons -
Media Syncing is a little harder (music is easy videos were easier to transfer via Disk drive, but it could have just been the way I ripped them), but if your a gadgethead you will love it. There is a program called multimedia sync by double twist on the device that I have been using instead of media player. I wish the video player was linked in with the music interface, I like the music player on the device (you can use windows media player as well and videos are found on photos and video tab), but I would like the videos to be more accesible, it is not hard to find them.

The HTC Sense looks really cool on this device, especially the weather. If you want ease, go buy an Iphone, if you want super fast clear quick interfaces and a phone that rules, get the HTC HD2. I always find it funny that Apple has such a following, had it not been for that Iphone they'd still be a laugher like they were in the 90's. This summer will be a pivotal time for Apple, with the HTC EVO coming out on sprint with 4G (very similar to this phone) and running on Android, they will have to step up their game. If you are on T-Mobile get this phone yesterday (If you can find it), for the Amazon price it's going to be hard to beat.

A+++++

Windows Phones Make a Comeback April 2, 2010

Reviewer:  diljs 

As an avid user of smartphones, for years I've completely ignored a series of dull, uncreative phones running windows. While a variety of hardware form factors, some even technically superior to the competition, have come out, the software continued to look incredibly boring compared to the iPhone, Android, and even Blackberry. The main selling points consisted of "It runs windows and has a start button like you're used to on a computer" and "We have Office and sync with Outlook!". While these may have appealed to some business customers, the consistently shrinking market share of Windows phones demonstrated their lack of appeal to consumers as the recent smartphone boom hit.

With the HD2 this trend may finally be coming to an end. In conjunction with HTCs beautiful Sense interface, some aggressive hardware, and some genuine innovations, the HD2 is a Windows phone I can actually use and recommend. Let's start with the pros and follow up with a few drawbacks.

**Hardware**

-The 1ghz Snapdragon processor coupled with 448mb of ram is blazing fast. This is the fastest speed in a phone currently available. The HD2 loads everything quickly, and can run multiple apps at the same time. You can feel how fast the phone runs by playing with it for a few minutes. Gone are the sluggish Windows Phones of old, constantly running out of memory and crashing. The HD2 is fast and has top notch hardware and you can feel it.

-The screen is huge: 4.3 inches and stretching from corner to corner. The Resolution at 800x480 pixels means you'll see much more on that big screen than average. That means more room for icons and that sexy weather display on the main screen.

-The HD2 supports 3g on T-mobile, including the upcoming higher speed 3g. This means the fastest downloads and best call quality available. Note: the phone does NOT have ATTs 3g bands and the 3g will not work if you're using it unlocked on ATT.

-5mp camera with auto focus and 2 LEDs. 5mp is the highest we see on most phones, and the camera looks great. Having not 1 but 2 LEDs for flash seems a bit silly but works well. The phone even comes standard with a little flashlight app for a blindingly bright way to see in the dark.

-Included 3.5mm jack - this is becoming standard on most phones, and it's great to see it on the HD2. This allows you to use standard headphones without an adapter when playing music or listening to the built in FM Radio.

-Included wifi, bluetooth, and a hardware (real) GPS for turn by turn directions round out all the bells and whistles included in the phone.

-Battery life is similar to most smartphones. You will easily get a day's use without having to charge, but most likely you'll have to plug it in at night.

**Interface**

-HTC Sense is what really makes the phone shine here. This part of the software is done by HTC, not Windows, and runs on top of standard Windows Mobile 6.5 professional. HTC Sense expands on the previous TouchFLO 3d interface and enhances the way customers interact with the phone. Sense creates the beautiful Today screen, animations for messages, social networking features. It also lets you interact with the phone in unique ways, such as pinching to zoom. Some of these features are so close to the iPhone that Apple has recently filed lawsuits against HTC.

-The home screen is customizable, though not quite to the extent of Android phones. It lets you place a few apps on the screen, along with a beautiful standard weather app that detects your phone's location and shows the current time and weather in your city.

-Touch is a much better experience on this phone than previous windows mobile phones. The screen is capacitive, meaning it uses touch instead of pressure. No awkward stylus or pushing is needed for the touch to work. The phone responds quickly and smoothly to any motions.

-Basic phone features like placing a call or sending a text remain simple, with big buttons on the main screen to do so.

-Typing on the touchscreen is a breeze due to the size of the screen allowing for a bigger keyboard. As someone who has often stuck to phones with hardware keyboards due to inaccurate screen keyboards, I found typing on the HD2 much easier than previous touchscreen keyboards, although still not as easy as using a hardware keyboard. The HD2 also includes the new SWYPE interface, which lets you type by dragging your fingers through all the letters of a word instead of tapping each one. SWYPE was surprisingly accurate in typing the correct word and will even learn new words once you type them manually.

**Included Apps and Accessories**

-This phone is being marketed as a media phone, and includes several media apps to demonstrate that. MobiTV lets you watch what is essentially Cable TV on your phone free for 30 days and then ten dollars a month after that. Blockbuster lets you rent or buy movies for your phone. Barnes and Noble eReader lets you purchase ebooks.

-The phone comes with a huge 16gb MicroSD card out of the box. This is the biggest memory card available currently, and gives you plenty of room for pictures, videos, music, and apps. The best memory card pairs perfectly with the best processor and screen, and it's great that HTC did not hold back on this extra.

-Full videos of Transformers 1 and 2 are preloaded on the memory card. These videos look great and show off the beautiful screen. Note the movies do take about 4gb of space on the memory card.

-The phone comes with a gel skin in the box to protect the phone, which you would have to buy separately on most phones.

**Drawbacks**

-Price is the number one concern here. The phone is priced higher than competing smartphones. This price seems justified, however, due to the cutting edge hardware in the HD2. It also comes with some nice accessories you'd have to buy separately from other phones. Upgrade and new customer deals will certainly lower the cost for those buying from T-mobile.

-The app store is another drawback. The good news is that the phone has one, the bad news is it's the smallest of ANY smartphone operating system. As of this review the Windows Marketplace carried less than 1,000 applications, compared to Android at 20,000 apps and iPhone at a staggering 150,000 apps. Even Blackberry, Palm, and Nokia carry more apps than Windows. You are also going to find significantly more paid than free applications for Windows Mobile apps. The Marketplace is simply far behind that of competing phones, which for a heavy app user will diminish the enjoyment of the HD2 by quite a bit.

-Windows Mobile 7 upgradeability is still up in the air, but it currently looks like this phone will NOT be getting an upgrade when the new OS is released. The phone does not support some key hardware feature (front buttons) that WM7 requires, and therefore it is unlikely to be upgraded. The upcoming OS promises to be very exciting, and the fact that this beautiful phone will probably not receive the upgrade is disappointing.

Overall this phone is fast, pretty, and offers top of the line features. The phone feels solid (and huge) in your hand, while the software is fast, works well and is fun to use. If the HD2 is any indicator, Windows Mobile may become a legitimate competitor in the smartphone market again. The phone seems to be selling very well, with T-mobile selling out almost everywhere the day the HD2 was released. I'd recommend this phone as a viable alternative to Android and the iPhone.

not looking so good any more... April 6, 2010

Reviewer:  H. Sachan  (Seattle, WA United States) -

I've been waiting for this phone a long time. I looked at everything in the market and the main reason to wait for this was the snapdragon processor (1 GHz) combined with the amazing screen resolution (480x800) and the operating system.

I'm a longtime user of smart phones and you can say that I'm a heavy user. I typically have multiple email accounts, use GPS for occasional driving or just for walking tours during travel, WiFi regularly during international roaming and Skype on 3G/Wifi for calls. Plus watching some videos, listening to live internet radios and pod-casts as well as use it as a media player.

All the websites provide the specs, so I'll get into the plusses and minuses of the phone and my experience with them.

Plusses:
+ great capacitive touch screen. Very responsive. 480x800 resolution for crystal clear colors and videos
+ Included Transformer movies (1&2) do a great job showing off the screen and the processor power. It's just HD video without any lags or hazy-ness. Very impressive
+ comes with 16GB with only movies on it so you have ample of room for other media.
+ plays live audio and video flawlessly over 3G
+ HTC Sense is amazing and does a great job of hiding those Microsoft screens which you rarely get to. All the apps like email, messaging etc look much better with Sense.
+ Comes with a great animated weather screen
+ very slim though a little on the heavy side
+ 5.0mp Camera comes with flash which is good for close up photos.
+ charges thru PC USP port as well and has an option to be connected as a hard-drive, which is much better and faster compared to the Media Sync feature
+ good battery life, lasts up a day and a half with regular 3g usage and video watching
+ can be used as a WiFi Router/Access Point.
+ comes with FM when you plus the head set as an antenna
+ Swype app (included) as a replacement for keyboard rocks.. much faster to type with that.

Minuses:
- Huge screen is a plus but then you can't keep it in your Jeans pocket as it might put strain on the screen or device
- even though camera is a 5.0 MP, some pictures do tend to be grainy due to low light
- Skype hs removed its support for WinMo 6.5 but the older version of apps can be found on the internet
- Doesn't come with the "Wifi Router" app which basically turns your phone into a Wifi Access Point.. So you can have many people connect to your phone thru wifi and the phone provides the internet thru 3G.
- Microsoft says that it won't provide Windows Mobile 7 on this device which could be a bummer since you might see new Windows Mobile 7 devices in next few months. I'm sure you can go to XDA developer website and get yourself a WM7 rom.

Other Notes:
o The T Mobile version of this phone will only get 3G on the TMobile and you won't be use it with AT&T or any other network, for that matter, in Europe as TMO uses 1700 as one of the band which is not used any where else. On the other hand, the European version of the phone will do 3g with AT&T and vice versa but they won't be compatible with TMO 3G.
o The above is true only for 3G while GPRS and EDGE are quad band which will work everywhere in the world.

I've been using this for few days now and am very impressed with it. Haven't found any deal breaker issue so far, but will keep you guys updated.

*** After few weeks
- Lot of issues with getting flash player to work seemlessly with the browsers. I ended up installing flash player, plash player 10, flash lite 3.1, windows .NET compact framework to make it work and then installed the latest Opera browse, opera mini browser, Skyfire browser only to find that Flash now works in Skyfire.

- Many people have stopped supporting windows 6.5 and are prepping for Windows Mobile 7 so difficult to get it working on this device. (e.g. Adobe flash player and Skype)

- Different browser have different zoom in / zoom out settings which is frustrating.
-- The Opera browser which comes installed has the pinch in and pinch out (expand) to zoom in /out.
-- Opera 10 (new download) has click zoom in and out.
-- Skyfire has its own icon where you can click on + and -
-- IE also has click (tap the screen) and then a slider on the right side to zoo in and out.
I'd like all the browsers to support pinch in and out or atleast a common method.

- Very less applications on 6.5 marketplace, for example kids learning apps are not available easily (at all?). This is due to lack of 'app marketplace' when this phone launched and hence the apps are scattered on all different websites and it becomes difficult to find them. The problem might be addressed with the launch of Windows Mobile 7 marketplace.

Given all the above issues and it becoming unresponsive every few days, I'd say that I had much higher expectations with the phone but the OS support might be pulling it down. Comparitively still a good phone due to specs but not as good on usability and what you need to do to make it customized to your taste and apps.

== Changed rating from ***** to *** ==

Best Windows Mobile phone ever - Sometimes I really forget it is a phone April 10, 2010

Reviewer:  Hector Arias  (Katy, TX) -

I want to start saying that I cannot keep my hands off this phone, IT IS AWESOME!!!!!!

Also, I will not go into phone technical specifications like processor and things like that since I am 100% sure you already know that. You want to know what people who own this phone think about it and what have been their experience, so here I go.

I got this phone on April 6 thru customer service. I had to wait almost a week since they ran out the first time this phone was out to the public. It was worth the waiting. This phone does MUCH MUCH more of what I was expecting:

* As a phone: excellent voice quality, easy access to contacts, touch screen very responsive (HTC Sence rocks here.) No dropped call so far and no issues with 3G connectivity as other customers have complained, at least not here in Houston TX where I live not even in any other cities or towns where I travel because of my job.

* As a PDA: Could not ask for nothing else, appoinments, tasks, office documents all works great and with the big screen you forget you are working on your phone.

* As a media device: WAO! WAO! and WAAOOOO!!!!!! you get HD quality, I have watched 4 movies already and it is awesome, it is like having a mini HD TV in your pocket, like my tittle says I forget it is a phone. Camera pictures are the best I have seen on a cell phone.

I like every single thing this phone has, but above all this (no, this is not Whitney Houston) I like the big screen, you have a great user experience when browsing the internet. You dont like Internet Explorer, it is okay Opera browser is included. I have already used blockbuster application and it is great, the only thing is you need to have wi-fi connection to download movies, it will not do it over 3G.

My advice to you is, know exactly what you are looking for on a phone, there are hundreds and hundreds of cell phones in the market, one for each specific user. It goes from a dummy phone for your 3 year old baby who wants to play with it to a simple basic phone for your 92 year old grandmother who just needs it to make a call when she is running out on her medication and needs to call her Dr. I have read some negative reviews on this phone that I just think why will people get a phone with so many applications if they don't take their time to sit one hour a day with the phone to learn all it uses. ALL ELECTRONICS INCLUDE A USER'S GUIDE EITHER ON PAPER OR ONLINE BUT YOU WILL HAVE ONE. PLEASE PLEASE READ IT. Dont blame the Operating System, people say I dont like it because it is windows mobile, I dont like because it is android, I don't like it because it is linux, I don't like it because it is apple (iphone). You want to know why they really dont like it? Because they don't know what they want, that is why.

So, give it try, don't like it? take it back and get something you like. One thing I like about this country is you buy it, you try it, you dodn't like it, you take it back to the store and you get your money back. SIMPLE!

ONE LITTLE UPDATE: When I first heard about SWYPE, you know....touch screen keyboard where you enter text with one finger sliding it to each letter until you type a word...anyway...I thought that was stupid!. Well guess what?? I joined the S... club....it is awesome, I love it, easy to use and faster to enter text. Once again if you want to start using SWYPE please READ THE INSTRUCTIONS dont pretend you know everything. ONE HINT ON THIS: If you "swype" one word and it does not recongnize it, all you have to do is enter the word letter by letter (not swyping)and at the end of the word hit space and there you go your phone will recognize it next time you swype that word. I found this on the SWIPE help user's guide, READ, READ, READ instructions. This helps me a lot since I text a lot in spanish as well, so I enter the word in spanish one time and next time I "swype it" I dont get errors or suggestions because the phone already knows that is what I want to say.

This phone has so many features you won't believe, Give it a try.

Had it for two days. March 25, 2010

Reviewer:  F. Mcdonald "JM"  (Bay Area, Ca USA) -

This phone is great, although their are some cut backs, its good does what a phone should do, the texting is easy, has a new feature where you can drag on the screen and it goes along with what your aiming for, pretty neat, still getting the feel for now, but will update the review if i ever have problems, but for now, the 6.5 on hd is the best possible phone u can have, and you say wow, look at that screen, why get a iphone, when you can have so many more apps on a HD2, and have a cheaper bill with t-mobile, financing + no contract = best price ever :D.

Edit 3/27/10: Phone is top notch, lasts a full day+ at full charge running more then 5+ apps, quality of picture, sound, camera and video is awesome. Thought i would never get use to not having a real keyboard lol, but the hd2 flexibility with both the little on screen one and the side keyboard works great, it will take you a day or two to get use to it, haven't found any flaws yet, except i forget to close a lot of apps lol, (drains the battery faster) so much to do :D.