Review: HTC HD7

As you may or may not be aware, I was lucky enough to review the HTC Mozart upon its arrival to Australia. I enjoyed it so much, it ended up replacing my trusty iPhone 4. Of COURSE I was going to say yes and jump at the chance to review the HTC HD7 offered by my good buddy Chopin of Alliance-NET. With the Mozart, I was gifted the phone by Telstra; with the HD7, it’s on loan. Did I enjoy the phone so much, I offered to buy if off Chopin? Read on to find out.

First off, it’ll be hard not to compare the HD7 to the Mozart. For my thoughts on the Mozart, you may want to start here and then read this. Since the HD7 is WP7 device built by HTC, I’m not going to re-address functionality that is the same; that means this is a hardware review and I’m pretty much leaving the OS and apps like the HTC Hub alone.

It’s a media phone

With a 4.3 inch screen and special kick-stand to prop up the phone while you watch movies or TV, this is a media phone, straight out. The screen size on the HD7 is huge when compared to my Mozart, but the phone itself doesn’t take up much more space. The headphone jack, rather than being placed beside (and getting in the way of) the lock button along the phone’s top, is positioned on the bottom, and that’s fine with me. If I’m listening to music, I’m more than likely going to put my phone in my pocket, and I don’t care if the unit is right-way up or not.

The bigger screen (and kick-stand) makes the HD7 a bit heavier than my Mozart, but not in a noticeable way. The phone slides into your pocket and once it’s there, it’s forgotten.

Initially, I thought the little groove at the bottom of the screen was its speaker, but it turns out that’s on the back and the groove is just aesthetic. Truthfully, as it doesn’t have a purpose, it doesn’t need to be there.

Is it a GOOD media phone?

The screen itself, while huge, is really where I start having problems with the phone. The resolution is clearly the same on the HD7 and the Mozart; the HD7 display is therefore blown up to match the screen dimensions. The result is a lot of ghosting and a lack of crispness whilst using the phone inside various apps. The easiest way to tell this difference is to navigate away from Live Tiles and onto the list of applications; merely scrolling up and down the list shows that the Mozart can keep the app text clear, and the HD7 cannot.

To be fair, movie playback didn’t suffer the same ghosting issues as text did, but I can’t honestly say that I’ll be watching to many videos on my phone. Another drawback is the HD7s storage size of 16GB, without any option to expand. My Mozart is also a 16GB-sized phone and I’ve almost filled it with a couple playlists and podcasts. If this phone is meant to be a media powerhouse, 16GB is not going to cut it once you throw a movie or two onto the device.

Okay, but is it a good Xbox Live phone?

We all know I love some Xbox. The HD7 is a good Xbox Live phone, but not that different from the Mozart. As far as battery life goes, the phones are fairly similar – I could get about 6-7 hours of normal use from it, synchronising between three separate email/calendar setups and taking the occasional phone call; with Xbox Live use, I was looking at about 2-3 hours of continual play using the Medium brightness setting. Those figures pretty much identical between the HD7 and the Mozart.

What the HD7 does offer is a bigger play surface with which to game, and this makes a difference with on-screen control games like Assassin’s Creed where you have one thumb on screen moving your character, and another thumb controlling jumping and fighting. I still was blocking too much of the screen with my huge hands, but I could see more on the HD7 than I could on the Mozart.

Final thoughts

Like I mentioned previously, I struggled not to compare the HD7 to my Mozart, and in doing so, I feel that the HD7 is an inferior phone. Taking a step back, if you haven’t had a WP7 handset and are looking to get into the fray of things, the HD7 is absolutely acceptable; you won’t have a Mozart to compare it with, and apart from the text ghosting, it’s pretty much same-same, but with more screen size to make use of. If you’re planning on using the device to watch movies or TV on the train ride to work, or want to game constantly, than this phone trumps the Mozart; just make sure you’ve got access to a charger if you ever want to make a phone call.