HTC 7 Pro Review

Posted by Morti on March 14, 2011 in Featured, Reviews · 0 Comments

Should we put our conclusion upfront and tell you this can be your choice if you are a typist looking for a Windows Phone 7 smartphone with a full physical QWERTY keyboard? Yes! And it’s not only us!

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 announcement had a lot of buzz, but not many devices were announced immediately, though HTC stayed ahead and here, to show 3 amazing smartphones - HTC HD7 and HTC 7 Mozart and the HTC 7 Pro, along with Samsung and LG to form the frontline for the WP7. Nokia will join the race later making it tighter but we are here to focus on HTC 7 Pro, so stay with us for more details.

The HTC 7 Pro released over a month ago in Europe and other areas will be launched as HTC Arrive via Sprint in the USA, but we had time needed to discover this awesomely elegant handset – 7 Pro, and consider now the right time to introduce you the HTC 7 Pro completely.

Design

The phone comes with quite elegant design, and it’s full landscape keyboard had thrown many people in thoughts whether the phone would be bulky- not true! It’s solid and with quality. HTC 7 Pro looks very attractive and designed to meet expectations of those users, that have been waiting for a simply and solid business oriented design.

The 5-row keyboard is located under the 3.6-inch capacitive touchscreen, but there is no need to worry about its usage as the screen is opened in such tilt that the keys could be used very easily. The sliding keyboard is impressive with keys located where you’ll find it quite comfortable for quick-messaging even for the clumsiest fingers.

The phone’s display is a little small comparing with other smartphones that are currently in the market, but that’s because there are three main buttons that you’ll find in all Windows Phone 7-powered handsets– Start button, Back button and Search button.

On the left and right sides we can find a volume rocker, micro-USB port and, on the top edge, a 3.5mm headset connector, that are designed in an appropriate manner.

The keypad is framed with a brushed aluminum back panel that makes us to have a feel of business smartphone. Besides this the phone’s silver edging completes its view and regardless the keyboard is slid or not users feel a proud owning the HTC 7 Pro.

The gadget comes with dimensions of 117.5x59x15.5mm and weighs 185g, that’s a little much, but do not forget the HTC 7 Pro comes with a sliding QWERTY keyboard that aggravates its weight.

Hardware

If we didn’t have Microsoft’s strict hardware requirements difference to other WP7 devices could have been more then you’ll see here. The HTC 7 Pro sports many awesome features that come to approve its appointment. The phone owns a spring-loaded tilting screen that is a very innovative mechanism allowing you to view something in a better angel.

As I know there is not any other smartphone in the market with this feature, so we can assume HTC has experimented with it and most likely it succeeded. But I guess many users will agree with me that the most notable feature of this device remains its keyboard as it is one of the best-designed and easiest to use mobile device keyboards ever made. Consider it succeeding noteable HTC Touch Pro 2 with most advanced features, elegant design and WP7 on board. Below is a video comparing the HTC 7 Pro and the HTC Touch Pro 2, watch it and conclude yourself which one is better.

Inside we can find a 1GHz Snapdragon processor successfully working with 576MB of RAM and 512MB of ROM, plus 8GB internal memory storage. Of course no microSD card slot which would make it possible to expand the memory and you can consider lack of a feature, but it’s what requires WP7.

Camera

The HTC 7 Pro is also boarded with a 5MP camera with a resolution of 2592×1944 pixels, autofocus and LED flash, and as you could foresee it has got HD video recording ability at 720p and face detection feature. The tests also showed the camera is a bit below par. There is not a secondary camera in front of the handset, which is one more minus for this smartphone.

Regardless all above mentioned features the camera owns a few shooting modes to tinker with such as beach and sports shot, a macro mode and a fair few effects. There is another feature coming through Windows Phone 7 and allowing users to squeeze the shutter button even when the handset is in standby mode and so you are able to shoot quickly. And if you are worried about the shots’ sizes and think there is not a big storage to save your photos, Microsoft has solved this issue too: you can send shots straight to SkyDrive which offers an online 25GB storage once you register at Windows Live. So users can easily share their pictures or keep them backed up.

Pictures by HTC 7 pro

HTC 7 Pro test videos

Box content

Being a business smartphone and designed especially for business professionals you wouldn’t find anything unnecessary or inappropriate there. And the HTC 7 Pro’s box leaves such impression too: it is compact, without any additional parts and you can see the opened view of the phone on the box. Besides the required information that must be on the box, you can also note the Windows Phone 7 logo on the right side of it. So once we get assured that the right WP7-powered smartphone we have ordered, we can proceed to the discovery of a box.

In the box we can find the HTC 7 Pro which is located in cellophane to avoid scratching, the battery, USB cable, earphones and user manual guides.

Below is video showing the unboxing process, and if you want to know how it looks like, check it out for your pleasure.

Connectivity

The HTC 7 Pro comes with an improved Internet Explorer which is much faster that one we have seen in Windows Phone 6.5. As the phone’s screen provides resolution of 480×800 pixels we can see many details that were unavailable earlier. The pages load quickly and it is really enjoyable using browser over Wi-Fi.

Battery

The handset sports standard 1500mAh battery that provides up to 7 hours of talk-time and up to 420 hours of stand-by mode in 3G network. But there was taken a test which shows quite surprising result – the HTC 7 Pro worked about 24 hours even with e-mailing and music listening.

So if you spend a lot of time using HSDPA, WiFi or GPS, you must think about daily charges.

Software

Being a Windows Phone 7 handset it is very heavily controlled by Microsoft that means no third party developers can skin it. Though this feature makes all WP7-powered smartphones look similar to every other, but we know Microsoft is the company who controls its product completely.

The aforementioned idea doesn’t mean Network operators and manufacturers can’t make changes, but they would be minimal and refer to apps and services. So massive user interface changes couldn’t be made in Windows Phone 7-based smartphones, i.e. the homescreen looks like others and is based on tiles. These vast square and rectangular icons allow us to link the apps, web pages, any other data we need. They can be moved in such way you want, and as a result the most used tile will appear on homescreen.

Sweeping a finger from right to left on the Home screen we can see the complete list of all apps we have installed in the phone and if you want to pin it on the homescreen just press it long.

In all Windows Phone 7 phones are several “hubs” like a Music and Video hub, an Office hub, a People hub and so on, so the data is arranged around them.

The interface is not similar to any other OS’s interface, so we won’t tell whether it is good or not, and if you have adapted to it, there won’t be any problem of using it. Regardless the fact you like it or not, I must say that the OS doesn’t rotate the homescreen, so you have to use it in portrait mode.

Contacts and calling

Though the contacts can be added directly onto the handset or acquired from the SIM card, but there is no way to sync it with Outlook. For this deal you have to get them off your computer and into Windows Live. This is very odd as other smartphones provide such functionality and are happy of it. Recently, HTC unveiled several smartphones with dedicated Facebook button, and other manufacturers have launched devices supporting social networking easily. Microsoft decided to bring such feature to its smartphones too and once you set up all your online accounts, it becomes easy to see new post to Facebook by friends. That’s cool, but if you would like to bring entries for the same contact from different places are brought together, it’ll be very “painful”. We hope Microsoft will work on it too.

The dialler is quite attractive, but here Microsoft shows its minimalistic approach and comes with not graphically rich charm. And though the call quality is fine but the speaker phone is quiet and even when we set it at top volume it was disappointing.

The HTC 7 Pro is pretty through general use, but when there a bar or two of connectivity after several seconds the phone shook it off.

HTC 7 Pro deals

If you are in Europe several carriers offer the phone. Expansys was one of the first retailers that decided to bring the smartphone to the UK and now the 7 Pro is available for £459,99 without any contract. Besides it the gadget is available via Orange that offers many types of data plans.

In Germany O2 was more consistent and offers very attractive deals. If you get it from this carrier the phone will cost €29 down payment and €22.50 per month for two years. But there is also a SIM-free version of the deal, in this case you must pay €599.
The HTC 7 Pro is available on Clove’s stores too that requires $701 for it.

Conclusion

The HTC 7 Pro (aka HTC Arrive in the USA) is designed for those users who want a hardware keyboard. It is the first CDMA smartphone running Windows Phone 7 which makes us to be more patient to it and find out whether it copes with the problem.

The phone is not designed to work in landscape mode, and it disappoints many geeks, so if we compare it with the HTC TyTN II that was launched 4 years ago, we see the last one works very well with a large horizontal slider keyboard and the TyTN II does it running Windows Mobile 6.1.

If you think this comparison was inappropriate, let’s see how it can stand against a phone with the similar features, the Dell Venue Pro. The last one is a WP7-powered handset and QWERTY slider too, but it boasts a 4.1-inch display. The full comparison videos are below:

If there are some doubts whether the HTC 7 Pro is worth to get it, look at the list below, and you’ll understand that there are more pluses than minuses. And if some lacks are incorrigible, I mean microSD card, but others could be improved in future.

Pros

Fantastic hardware keyboard
Innovative spring-loaded tilting screen
Pocket to Picture camera feature works well with easy to use button
Great for Xbox Live gaming and Zune Media Playback

Cons

Windows Phone 7 limitations (no copy paste, etc..)
No stereo speakers
Only 8GB of non-upgradable storage

After all we come to say that HTC 7 Pro is the best Windows Phone 7-handset with with tilting screen and hardware keyboard. May be it is not good enough in gaming aspect, but the HTC 7 Pro is an elegant business smartphones and those users who wants a device with the aforementioned feature, there are Samsung Omnia 7 and HTC HD7 with larger screen.

If the question refers whether buy a Windows Phone 7 smartphone at all, it’s another story. But I guess the phone will succeed and become one of the most popular smartphone in Europe and in the USA, as carriers come with attractive deals for it.