AshMan says…

HTC Snap – the smartphone that goes and goes and goes

AshMan says…

HTC is known for making mobile phones with a great number of features and fantastic build quality. The HTC Snap follows in that tradition.

When first holding the phone you realise just how thin and light it is (weighs only 120grams). The phone isn’t a touch screen based device, but does feature a fixed QWERTY keyboard. The keyboard is a lot better than any other QWERTY device I have used before with the raised keys assisting you to select the key you want therefore significantly reducing typing errors.

The 2.4-inch QVGA display has an LED backlight which really is great for using in a number of different locations, both bright and dark. The screen feels like it should have been just a tiny bit taller as when surfing some websites you cannot see enough information on the screen at any one time.

The phone comes boxed with Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard but HTC has released the upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.5 Standard. Even though there are no noticeable changes with the upgrade straightaway, the addition of Windows Marketplace and Microsoft My Phone are definitely there.

The Smartphone features 256MB of ROM and 192MB of RAM which is plenty for this device to happily multitask and the task manager is always available if you need to clear up some memory. The HTC Snap seems to have missed out on the usual HTC make over it gives to all of its other devices, but Windows Mobile 6.5 seems to be pretty good on its own as the navigation is controlled by the scroll wheel and buttons.

New users of the scroll wheel system will take a little bit of use to familiarise themselves, but Blackberry users will feel right at home. The default sensitivity setting of the scroll wheel doesn’t feel sensitive enough and will require some tweaking to get the perfect sensitivity for web browsing and for scrolling through large numbers of emails or text messages seamlessly.

A new feature to the HTC Snap which doesn’t appear in any other HTC device is the Inner Circle button located at the bottom right hand side. This button will launch an email application which only displays emails from contacts which you select to be in your inner circle. This application is great in some instances but a downside is that if you use your phone for personal and business use (which most people will) they won’t be able to view family or friends separately to business contacts.

The HTC Snap comes also with a wireless antenna supporting b and g, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR and A2DP for wireless headsets, GPS and HTC extUSB (which serves as the USB connection and headset connector). It features HSPDA with 7.2mpbs down-link and a quad band radio.

Battery life is outstanding for the Smartphone with a light test (includes an occasional phone call and the Wi-Fi being turned on for one hour a day) seeing the phone run for almost 6 days non-stop. For the heavy test (includes Wi-Fi being turned on full time and an hour phone call each day) the phone lasted just under 2 days.

The 2.0 megapixel camera on the back is fixed focused and provides an average image quality; which is understandable as this phone’s appeal is targeted towards the  business users who wouldn’t be using the camera that much in essence.

In the end, the HTC Snap is a very capable phone with a good keyboard and an outstanding battery life. If you are after a QWERTY keyboard mobile phone this is certainly a strong contender.

Tags: 6.1, 6.5, business, HTC, Maple, microsoft, mobile, Ozone, QWERTY, Review, Snap, Upgrade, windows