HTC Radar 4G Windows Phone (T-Mobile)

My wife is in love with this thing! November 30, 2011

Reviewer:  A. Celen  (RI, USA) -

(Some background: I have had an EVO for more than a year now. I also have an iPad 2 and had spent enough time with an iPhone 4)

:: First things first ::
This phone does not has as many apps as iPhone and it is not as flexible as an Android. However, it is fast, easy to use, simple and elegant which puts it in its own category. So, it is pretty similar to an iPhone in terms of user experience, but instead of "every app for its own" approach that Apple takes, Microsoft goes with "every app is part of the system". And believe me, it works so well that you can't believe how Windows Phone 7 (WP7) is not getting the attention it actually deserves.

:: Pros ::
- Timely updates + Good looks + Reliability
All without the ugliness of Blackberry OS. My wife had a Blackberry before and new Blackberry phones are just not on par with others. So, she wanted to get an Android but it was quite impossible to find a good looking one that is smaller than 4" and even when you find some, they were almost always slow as hell thanks to the crapware (I'm looking at you Nascar!) and skins HTC/Motorola/Samsung loves to put on them. Where as this phone provides a fluid vanilla OS experience with a couple of HTC and T-Mobile specific apps that, by design, cannot get in your way.

- The OS is directly supported by Microsoft, not manufacturer.
This means, like iPhone, she doesn't have to wait for update to be released by HTC like I do with my EVO.

- It already has most of the popular apps
And they are considerably high quality. This is mostly due to the Microsoft's involvement with major apps and also because there are no fragmentation issues since WP7 imposes certain hardware specs and the OS is the same regardless of the manufacturer.

- Solid construction and good looks.
With its unibody design, device feels solid in hand and seems like it can take daily physical abuses (dropping, scratching, bending etc.) without a hitch.

- Elegantly beautiful and smooth UI
Whoever designed WP7 interface clearly put a lot of thought into it since it is both modern, simple and easy-to-use. It takes 5 minutes to get a hang of it and my wife hasn't looked at any manuals or anything to use it. The butter smooth animations, quality on-screen keyboard, responsiveness... you get the same feeling of "smoothness" throughout the whole device. Although, keep in mind that the interface is not as customizable as an Android.

- 2-level dedicated camera button!
I don't understand how this is not common practice but having a dedicated button is great. It also has the screen-tap option, if you like it the other way, but it's just disabled by default.

- Bing integration works well
Built-in Bing services allow you to make live translations and product searches from camera snapshots, search local places around you, make voice activated searches, song recognition and possibly more. You want to see reviews of a book? Show it to Bing and it will tell you. You saw a Franch movie poster but don't know French? Take a picture of it and Bing will recognize the words and translate it for you. You can do the same things on other phones as well but it's just too easy and simple on this one. No extra apps needed either.

- (Update 12/13) Battery performance is very good.
This phone can make it through 2 full days with low to moderate usage with default settings, and my wife doesn't even bother to turning Wifi and GPS off. For a long time EVO user like me, this performance is a lot more than good. WP7 also provides some advanced battery saving options but we haven't tried that yet.

:: Cons ::
- App Market is still small
If you can't live without hundreds of different apps with tons of alternatives for each of them, look somewhere else because Market is still in its infancy. There are not a lot of options for everything and apps that already exist are still getting used to concepts of the Metro UI. However, the apps that currently exist would satisfy users for most if not all use cases (twitter, facebook, games, whatsapp etc.)

- Camera is good but not as good as an F2.2 should be
Even though it's better than most and lens being F2.2 (like iPhone 4s or Galaxy Nexus) provides a good low light performance, the quality is not on par with latest Samsung or Apple devices, especially under low light.

- (Update 12/13) Non-expandable memory
Although the 8gb built-in memory should be more than enough for most users, if you want to keep your whole music or movie archive with you, look somewhere else.

:: Wrap up ::
All in all, if you are looking for a solid, beautiful phone that provides a reliable and consistent experience with the most modern interface on the market, you can go with this phone and believe me, you will not regret it.

(Update(12/13): Cleared some things up and added some extra information)

Love this phone. January 6, 2012

Reviewer:  VisionCloud 

Once Mango came out, I spent a lot of time searching for a 4G Windows Phone that I could use on T-Mobile. When The HTC Radar, Samsung Focus S and HTC Titan all hit the market and I tried to get my hand on the Titan of Focus S. Unfortuantely ATT was stingy and would not let me buy one of the phones without signing up for a contract, even if I was willing to buy it for full price. I gave up and went to T-Mobile and bought the only 4G Windows Phone on the T-Mobile network, the HTC Radar 4G. I was a little dissapointed that I had to go with this lower end model, but I was mistaken. This phone may be cheaper and not necessarily one of HTC's flagship phones but it has still been absoultely amazing to work.

I had an Android before this and abosultely loved the thing, I was a little hesitent to leave Android and go to the newer Windows Phone OS but eventually I jsut got sick of managing my phone and wanted to start using my phone. With Windows Phone 7.5, that is exactly what I got. I no longer spend hours trying to manage, tweak, root, customize and flash the rom on my phone. Now I just spend hours using it.

Email: The email on this is way easier to use and way better looking than it was on my HTC MyTouch 4g that I had before. It used to be that only emails on my GMail account came looking anywhere near what they wouuld look like on the computer. Any emails that came through on my other accounts came through as a jumbled mess of text and were barely legible. Now every single email, regardless of account comes through looking identical to what it would on the computer, just smaller. I never use to actually check my email on my phone, it was just too much of a pain. Now I find myself checking my email on my phone more frequently than on my computer. It is just easier or at the very least, just as easy.

Music: In my humble opinion the music is where Windows Phone stands out. I never listened to music on my android, it was just too difficult. The default player was complicated and third party player apps did little to improve the experience. More than the player though, syncing music was a joke. I would have to manually choose music and move it over to the SD card. When I ran out of space and wantd new music I would have to go manually choose which albums/ songs to remove and then add more. With the Zune software moving, changing and syncing my music is way easier. Granted I have been using Zune since the first Z30 was released. I know for some people being tied to a program is annoying, but for me, having a software that manages the syncing is way easier and prefered. Where the music really shines through though is the live streaming music. This is similair to Spotify or Pandora where as you can stream music live to your phone. The difference in my opinion is that this is on the fly any music I want play live. FOr an example, during December, my wife and I went to the store, on a whim, we decided to start doing our Christmas shopping and purchased a Christmas tree and all our decorations. Being in the festive spirit, on the way home, I wanted to start playing some Christmas muisc. Not knowing before hadnd that we were going to be doing anything Christmas that day, I had no Christmas music on my phone, but that waas okay. I clikced marketplace, did a search for my favorite christmas albums and had the music streaming almost instantly. This is better than iPhone since you can do live streaming, better than Spotify, because you don;t have to create the playlist before hand and better than Pandora or Slacker because you are in control of exactly what songs you want to play. ANd for those who don't want to be in control and just want the device to pick musi for you that it thinks you might like, just hit Smart DJ from your phone and it will start playing any songs, albums, artists that it thinks are similair to the music you started with, including music on your phone and music from the marketplace.

Productivity: Office is one of the major reasons I wanted a Windows Phone, as a college student I use Microsoft OneNote to take notes during class. Sometimes I want to review my notes on the fly or dont want to whip out my computer to take notes in class. With OneNote on Windows Phone I can take and review notes either on my ocmputer or on my phone and they instantly and autonatically sync with one another. That mixed with how all my other documents are always available to me through SkyDrive and office, I have all my documents with me anywhere I go. This makes me happy, makes my boss happy and makes me a better student.

Some other features that I loved getting having come from my Android where I didnt have the features was my calendar sync and to do list sync. Sure the google calendar would sync to my google account online, but there was really no good desktop software that made that easy tos ee. If I wanted to view my calendar, I would have to go open a web page and sign in. Where I already used Outlook/ Windows Live mail to keep track of my calendar, I really just wanted that calendar to be the same as the one on my phone, with Windows Phone, wish granted. Now the calendar I use on Outlook and the calendar I use on my phone are one in the same without any extra setup. Also now my To-DO list is specific to my phone either, the To-Do list syncs to my live account where I can view it anywhere.

Overall my experience with my Phone has been amazing. To be fair though here are some of my complaints.

The lack of SD card support and the limited 8GB internal storage are kind of dissapointing, but since the only reason I use that space is for music and I can stream music live, it ends up not being that big of a deal. Did I mention you can make playlists with music that isn't even on your phone, so your favorite music is always a tap away, even if it's not on the phone.

Something else that should be mentioned is the lack of a digital compass. The Radar is lacking an internal digital compass so it will not be compatible with any compass apps. GPS and all that still works great, you just will never be able to use your phone to know if you are facing directly north. This also makes it so that cool novelty apps like Star Maps, don't work quite how they should.

Now a little about the phone itself. The phone is sexy. It is aluminum and white and has a very ckean look about it. The unibody aluminum design has witheld some nasty falls and only has one very minor microscop ding after all it's gone through with me. The glass appears strong and although I have not seen verification, one or two sites cliam it is forilla glass. The way that even the windows, back and search buttosn are part of the touch screen was very sleek and gives the phone a uniform look about it. The camera takes excellent quality shots and I love the panorama mode that it comes with. The white battery case looks a little weak, and I would not be surprised if it has stress marks in the paint after a year or so. This is one of the few phones that has the ability of looking masculine and refined or feminime and cute. With the white phone and the ability to go from white to black backgrounds on the os as well as change the color scheme, this phone is quite flexible in it's apearance.

Great upgrade from Android phone November 26, 2011

Reviewer:  PS3MyLuv  (NY - USA) -

I recently bought this Mango phone and switched to T-Mobile after a close friend recommended it. I had an Android phone with the old carrier and hated every second of using it. I was cursing at it even in public, which is not a good thing where I live. Anyway, I've had this phone for a whole week and I whole-heartedly love it and recommend it!

Now, I want to say that the biggest drawback about this phone for some people, but not for me, is the lack of expansion memory. It has 8GB flash memory builtin and 6.9GB of that can be used by the user for storage. I rarely listen to music other than on my car radio and I never watch video on the go, and the only portable media I'm gonna utilize are e-books, for which the Mango has the best mobile version of the Amazon Kindle app, and Amazon lets you store the Kindle books on the cloud. I just plan to use my new Radar for social networking, calendaring, and apping. So 6.9GB should be more than enough for me, at least before my 2-yr contract runs out. I've installed about 30 apps including a couple that take up about 18MB each but altogether they haven't taken up much space at all. And the Kindle app is intelligent in caching my ebooks, so for me storage will not be a concern. But if you want to load loads of music and video, you should consider the HTC Titan, with expansion storage support and a much bigger screen! The Radar's screen is the same size as the iPhone, or so I heard, and it's bright and highly viewable.

I truly like the Mango's smooth, fluid interface! The tiles on the home screen are live, and easy to see, and reflect realtime info. Scrolling through the tiles or the app list, is extremely smooth, unlike on a lot of Android phones and even the latest iPhone (yes, I've tried that, too). The Metro style is simplistic, emphasizing ease on the eye and mind, not showing off eye candy. The tiles are big so easy to tap without worrying tapping the wrong thing, like I often do on my latest iPod touch. This smartphone is fast, no lags like on my previous POS known as android. Everything is intuitive, unlike that old POS or (hohoho) my Windows laptop or definitely my LINUX desktop. I also like the search button at the bottom, it's easy to search on the web, or for shopping or for music (like Shazam) or for local to-dos!

Battery life has been adequate, i charge it once a day after making calls, surfing the web on the Tmo 4G network and also WiFi and playing plenty apps. I'm not thrilled about Tmo's 4g network as a lot of times, even outdoors, I have trouble connecting on 4g. But I love my Radar!! Perfect size and weight and such a pleasure to use on a daily basis. It's a winner!

Windows Phone 7.5 is an A++, the HTC Radar is a B December 5, 2011

Reviewer:  Dan  (WA) -

I highly recommend WP 7.5/Mango. I've used WP 6.5, BB, and iphone extensively, and I finally feel like I have a smartphone that is easy to use, easy on the eyes, and fun. (Well, ok, the iphone is all of those things, of course, but I like Mango even better. A lot better.) The tiles configuration was intuitive to manipulate and set up the the way I wanted it. I appreciate the way the OS allows me to keep classes of things, like gaming apps or people, clumped under a single tile or broken out and pinned individually to the start menu, depending on how I want it. I really like the People function, which did a good job integrating my facebook, linked in and google groups with very little effort or braindamage on my part. Syncing to my gmail was far easier than I expected it to be. I've had no software crashes or other bugs at all in a month of using the phone. I'm also coming to really appreciate the whole "Windows Live"/Skydrive/cloud computing thing because of this phone and OS, and T-Mobile's 4G speeds. I do large construction management, and I've started posting pdfs of important plans and documents to the cloud. Now when I'm confronted with a problem in the field, my phone has enough juice to be able to open a pdf of the plans. Assuming that the plans themselves aren't the source of the problem, we can often settle things right there. I know a tablet might be even better for this, but, hey, my phone is ALWAYS in my pocket. iPhone probably can do that, too, but WP7.5 was so simple that I figured it out while waiting for a meeting.

The HTC Radar is pretty decent, but I wanted a better service provider more than I wanted a better phone. The camera is not very good in low light, and the memory is NOT expandable, contrary to the statements in the Amazon product blurb. I haven't had any issues with the processor feeling underpowered. The battery is good for just one day of moderate usage, which is pretty typical for smartphones, as I understand it. Reception is good. The main issue for me is the memory. I like the OS enough that I think I'd strongly consider ditching the iPod if I could squeeze a decent amount of music and video on this phone. I want about 6 gigs of music and about 4 hours of video on the phone on top of that, and there's no way to make that happen.

While I feel like the hardware constrains the software a bit, this is a great option for T-Mobile customers. I haven't regretted mine for a second.

Love this phone! November 23, 2011

Reviewer:  H. Kaczmarek 

I have this phone and just love it! The interface is very smooth and have not have any issues of lag. The phone reception and call quality has been perfect. It is a bit light for me in weight, but that is just my personal preference. The front screen has everything you'd want to keep your eye on right there. Your phone, people, messaging, email, etc. There are a few drawbacks like any phone. You cannot create a speed dial list (like to assign a person to a number on the keypad). Creating a custom ringtone is a hassle. Luckily I only change my ringtone up maybe a couple times a year. There is no expanding memory. That could be a big deterant for some. The other bigger issue is that the battery is internal. You cannot just replace the battery. This was something I weighed, but my Ipods are also internal batteries and I love them still :-). So, those are the 'cons'. I love the phone despite the cons.