HTC 7 Pro Review

Introduction:

Windows Phone 7 suddenly became very interesting, didn't it? Overnight it went from being the underdog in the mobile OS family, to a part of the “three horse race” Nokia's Stephen Elop alluded to while introducing the Nokia Windows Phone plans.

Thus every new WP7 handset will be examined and scrutinized with the notion that it is to eventually become a part of a huge ecosystem of phones, apps and cloud services that the Nokia-Microsoft tandem is about to deliver probably a year from now.

Here enters the HTC 7 Pro, the last of the announced HTC Windows Phone 7 handsets to come, which adds a physical keyboard in the mix. There is another WP7 device with a slide-out physical QWERTY -   the LG Quantum on AT&T - but let's see how this one holds up as your mobile typewriter...

Design:

The HTC 7 Pro carries the company's typical solid build quality – it is crafted with quality plastic all around, and has a brushed aluminum back cover for added style. A brushed metal ellipse also marks out the area where the 5MP camera with LED flash, and the loudspeaker are on the back.




You can compare the HTC 7 Pro with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The back has a screw placed prominently in the midst of its soft-touch plastic low end, that looks like it's holding the battery cover. Fret not, though - for removing the aluminum back panel you don't need to carry a screwdriver with you at all times, or grow large nail on your pinky – just open the keyboard, and the cut to pry open the back cover is on the right hand side. The bad part about the HTC 7 Pro is that it doesn't have a microSD card slot, so you are stuck with the 8GB/16GB of internal storage. The volume rocker on the left is flush with the side, and that's where the microUSB port is located, too. The right only hosts the dedicated camera button, whereas at the top we have the lock/power key, and the standard audio jack.


The display is of the odd 3.6” size, and carries the 480x800 pixels of resolution each of its WP7 brethren is boasting. It is a nice, bright LCD screen, with relatively decent viewing angles, but it could use a bit more contrast to its colors.


At 0.61 (15.5mm) thickness and 6.53 oz (185 g) of weight the HTC 7 Pro isn't the most slender kid of the bunch, but for a solidly built QWERTY slider tailored mostly to the suit types, it will pass. Nevertheless, that heft won't let it stay unnoticed in your pocket, or during long conversations.


Luckily, the tilting slide-out QWERTY keyboard mechanism gets the job done. For the T-Mobile G2, HTC went with this innovative Z-hinge mechanism, which was cool, albeit it looked iffy, and still didn't allow you to tilt the screen up; it also had you bashing thumbs against the lower part of the display half when pressing symbols on the top keyboard row.


The HTC 7 Pro takes all these, and corrects them. The screen half now slides up with a tight movement, and, when fully opened, its lower part recesses into a pit designed specifically to accommodate it, thus making it almost flush with the keyboard half, decreasing the thumb-bashing to a minimum. The effort to push it open is pretty significant, though, and at the end of the movement it drags a bit against the textured surface surrounding the keyboard, instead of opening with a click.

For us the screen tilt mechanism should be an integral part of any smartphone with a physical keyboard, as it adds great value to the whole I-have-a-bulky-QWERTY-phone experience, regardless if you are typing or watching movies. 

The keys themselves are chiclet style, each with its separate dome, very well spaced, and with enough travel to them so as typing to feel comfortable. The LED backlit letters make typing in less than perfect lighting conditions easy, and there are two small lights on the left to indicate when you are using upper case letters, or have pressed the function button to access some of the special symbols that glow in the dark in different color too. Add to all that goodness a dedicated top number row, and we might as well have the best slide-out QWERTY keyboard created for a phone in recent memory. It made us almost grin with delight while using it, and forget about the significant weight it added to the HTC 7 Pro.

Interface and Functionality:

We won't spend much time discussing the merits of the minimalistic Metro UI and the simple, unobtrusive ways of WP7, as we've done those in detail before. Suffice it to say that this mobile OS has one of the best Facebook contact integrations on a smartphone we've seen to this end, managing to rival Android overlays of Samsung and HTC. And, if you happen to use Hotmail (still the most popular web email service), Windows Live, SkyDrive or other parts of the Microsoft cloud ecosystem, you are in for an even greater treat.


It's not all rosy with the WP7 interface as found in the HTC 7 Pro, though, for the simple fact that the UI has obviously never been meant for having a physical keyboard present. It doesn't rotate in landscape mode when you open the keyboard. Heck, it doesn't even go into landscape in the menus, and not even when you choose the OneNote app, for example. Only when you select new note, then the thing appears in landscape form, exactly as it would if you only had a virtual keyboard, so Microsoft needs to work on that.

Messaging, Browser, Connectivity and Software:

It is still perplexing that the only things you can attach to your email in Windows Phone 7 are found in the Pictures hub. To send a Microsoft Word document, for example, you have to go into the Office hub,  and email it from the document itself, so tough luck if you need to send both an Excel and a Word file in one and the same email. We know WP7 is geared mainly for consumer devices but, come on, Microsoft has to step up its Office integration game as this is one of its main points to differentiate. Hopefully the Nokia collaboration will prod Redmond to do so.



The WP7 browser is a speedy machine with minimalistic interface, but the lack of Adobe Flash support cripples it a bit, hopefully time will be spent on that front as well, when IE9 comes with the “Mango” update in the fall. Until then, you will have a Flashless experience in the browser.


The HTC 7 Pro is offered both in GSM and CDMA flavors, and the GSM version we had goes up to the traditional 7.2Mbps data download speeds in 3G mode. The handset also has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and A-GPS radios. The GPS location lock is quick, but the software used is Bing Maps, which doesn't offer free turn-by-turn navigation or map coverage anywhere near Nokia's Ovi Maps, or even Google Maps Still, it is based on NAVTEQ cartography as is Ovi Maps, that is why the Nokia-Microsoft deal will be so valuable in that department for... Microsoft.

HTC has customized the default WP7 homescreen adding its own tiles like the HTC Hub, which takes you to the familiar HTC animated weather screen, a YouTube client which is way better than the default WP7 one, as well as the Sound Enhancementapp which allows you to turn on or off the surround sound mode and equalizer presets.




There are also a few more tiles that add value to HTC's handsets WP7 homescreen - Photo Enhancer, Stocks, Converter and Connection Setup, which offer additional functionalities that Windows Phone doesn't have out of the box. This proves that Microsoft's mobile OS can be customized by manufacturers in one way or another, to achieve differentitation.


There are 448MB RAM/512 MB ROM on the HTC 7 Pro, as well as your choice of 8GB or 16GB of internal memory. You can install additional applications from the Marketplace, which now has more than 8000 apps, covering most of the basics.

Camera and Mutlimedia:

The HTC 7 Pro has a 5MP camera, which is becoming the minimum for smartphones these days, complete with an LED flash. The camera interface is pretty basic compared to the way HTC is able to customize it on its Android handsets, but it has still managed to sneak in a few metering modes and preset scenes like Portrait, Landscape, Sports, Beach, Backlight, Candlelight, as well as a Macro mode. Four effects are at your disposal to make things interesting – Grayscale, Negative, Sepia and Solarize.





The shot-to-shot times are very low – a second or two – and having a two-stage camera button is always preferred to the virtual ones. The photos themselves turned out decent for the murky day they were taken in, but, as usual, the HTC camera is nothing to write home about. There are unfocused spots here and there, and a slight purple hue, especially when a lot of sky is framed, however the 5MP snapper captures enough detail. The contrast is bumped up by default to make the pics more appealing, but so many camera and phone makers are doing that, we never consider it a downside.

Indoor shots were a bit noisy and rather unfocused, you have to keep the phone extremely steady to get a decent shot. The LED flash turned out pretty weak too, and was casting unnatural shadows over the objects.

The video is set at VGA resolution by default when you open the camera app, so make sure you change it to HD 720p before you videotape anything. The resulting high-resolution clips are filmed with 25fps, and exhibit enough detail, quick exposure adjustment when panning around, as well as contrasty picture. Noise is also kept in check, so the HD video captured with the HTC 7 Pro does the job.



HTC 7 Pro Sample Video:



As for the music and video media players, they are, naturally, rolled into the Zune interface on Windows Phone 7, which has cool and simple interface, but the phone itself doesn't support DivX/Xvid video playback out of the box, only MPEG-4 codecs.


The loudspeaker is pretty weak, so for enjoying music you will need to plug your headset, which gives you surround sound, and a bunch of equalizer presets unique for the HTC WP7 phones. Conference calls would also be a challenge with such an unimpressive speaker, which is a bit strange for a business oriented device that is pretty fat to boot - HTC could have placed something with more oomph in it.

Performance and Conclusion:

The quality of the earpiece on the HTC 7 Pro is pretty good. We were able to hear those calling us distinctly with natural sounding voices, although we'd prefer a bit more in the volume department. The microphone on the bottom of the phone did a good job converting and sending our voices over the air to the receiving side with minimal distortion.

The 1500mAh battery is rated for 7 hours of talk time in 3G mode, which is about average, and you will have to charge the handset daily unless you use it very lightly.

The HTC 7 Pro is one of only two Windows Phone 7 handsets with physical keyboards, and it packs a great QWERTY that has a carved space for the screen half bottom when tilted up, very good key travel, and five chiclet-style key rows with a dedicated number row. This makes it one of the best messaging phones not only in WP7 land.

The build quality is very solid, but the device's heft is considerable, even for a QWERTY slider. The camera stills and videos are average, but it does shoot HD video, so it is more than fine for casual snapping.

The Windows Phone 7 platform is still in its nascence and it shows every now and then. It is not optimized for landscape physical keyboards, as it doesn't rotate the menus, nor the apps in landscape when you open the keyboard, except where it does with a virtual keyboard anyway.

The YouTube app is very weak, but luckily HTC offers its own version, which is much better. The generally fine browser doesn't support Adobe Flash, and you can't attach both Word and Excel file in one and the same email with the default email client. These hinder the experience somewhat, but functionalities will be expanded with the upcoming Spring update, and there is a big update slated for the fall.

In the meantime, the HTC 7 Pro will stay the best WP7 handset with a physical slide-out QWERTY, and you should keep an eye on the Nokia-Microsoft wild card - good things might come from there for current WP7 owners too.

If you are looking for alternatives, the HTC Desire Z/T-Mobile G2 handset is a great Android option, but the screen doesn't tilt. You can also have a look at the Nokia E7, which offers bigger 4” screen that tilts, 8MP camera, and great keyboard, but is running Symbian, which might be a deterrent for you, if you were attracted to a WP7 device because of the slick interface in the first place.

Software version of the reviewed unit: 2250.10.12201.401

HTC 7 Pro Video Review: