HTC Rhyme Review

Introduction:

Most smartphones are generic in their appearance, black or gray in color, and aren’t really targeted for a specific gender. Meet the HTC Rhyme from Verizon Wireless - one of the few smartphones that are designed for women. But in doing so, the Rhyme is fairly unappealing to men, which is eliminating half of all potential smartphone buyers. Let’s take a closer look at the Rhyme and see if it has what it takes for the ladies.

Included in the retail package is the HTC Rhyme ADR6330 smartphone, 1600mAh non-removable battery, wall charger with microUSB cable, 3.5mm headphones, lighted indicator charm, desktop charging dock, and user guides.



Design:

Not only is the HTC Rhyme plum in color, but so are the box packaging, earbuds and lighted indicator charm – giving it a monochromatic look as everything matches. The phone itself feels well made and fits comfortably in smaller hands, again appealing to women with its color. On the front is a standard 3.7” WVGA touch-sensitive TFT display with a VGA camera above it and four capacitive buttons on the bottom. We say the display is standard, as text is sharp and images look well, but it doesn’t really stand-out from the competition, and can be difficult to view outside in sunlight. We also appreciate the large power/lock button on the top, but the side volume rocker can be a bit difficult to find by touch.



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

We also like that included with the phone is a set of earbuds and desktop charging dock, which you usually would have to purchase separately. There is also a lighted charm that you plug into the headset jack. When you get a new message or call, the charm will light up, so it’s not to disturb anyone. But it seems rather odd to use this, as the phone’s display would also turn on, and you can set the phone to vibrate if you don’t want it to ring.

Interface:

What’s a bit surprising is that the Rhyme is the first HTC smartphone on Verizon to come equipped with the new HTC Sense UI 3.5 interface. We’ve always loved HTC Sense, as it makes using a smartphone easier and has plenty of customizations for the user. Now with the new 3.5 version, you are treated to a few extras. First off, you have four icons that show on the lock-screen for easy access to the phone, mail, camera, and messages, and there are 6 lock-screen styles you can choose from (Current, Photo album, Friend Stream, Weather, Stocks, and Clock). For the desktop, there are 3 scenes (Verizon, Social, and Entertainment) and 3 skins (HTC, Olivine, and Turquoise). This provides a nice level of customization, which HTC is known for. Widgets are also in abundance (over 30), and a few new ones are Endomondo (which allows you to select different exercise work-out modes that you can compete with your friends on Facebook), Quick Launch (that is shown on the main home screen for displaying the current time, weather, and icons for the mail, messages, calendar, and camera gallery), and Watch (that shows current movies that you’ve rented or purchased from the on-line library).

Of course, our favorite is the Friend Stream app and its accompanying desktop widget, which aggregates content from your Facebook and Twitter accounts. In addition to reading the latest messages from friends, you can even post your own Tweet or Facebook status message simultaneously without the need of running two separate dedicated apps. Moreover, it even allows you to shoot a photo and upload it directly to your social networking accounts. Regardless, it is still nice to have the stand-alone Facebook app installed, as that does allow for some extra features like direct chatting with on-line Facebook friends.



Contacts:

Clicking on the “People” icon in the app drawer will bring up a list of all your contacts shown alphabetically and with their picture on the left side. This is populated by your Google, Facebook, Flickr and Twitter accounts, as well as being able to tie-in with Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync accounts. When you click on a contact, it will then open up a new screen and show all their information, as well as 4 icons on the bottom for viewing their details, threads, updates, and gallery. This is all very useful, and we love the way that HTC Sense brings all this information together, yet makes it easy to use.



Organizer and Messaging:

The calendar works very well, as it pulls information from all your accounts (Google, Facebook, Exchange, PC Sync) and aggregates them to the phone. This way, when you go to the calendar app (or desktop widget), all your events are shown in a day, week, or monthly view. You can also click on them to add reminders and alert tones.

We still have a fondness for using a physical keyboard when tying a message, but unfortunately the virtual QWERTY keyboard on the Rhyme’s 3.7 inch display can feel a bit small and cramped when used for more than a few minutes. It's our opinion though, and the ladies with smaller hands will feel fine using it. You can automatically setup your email for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, AOL, Yahoo!, Windows Live Hotmail, and GMail, as well as manually entering in your own POP3 and IMAP accounts. Once they are all set up, you can view your emails by account, or in a combined view that designates each account’s email with a different color bar on the left side. Naturally, you can also send and receive text and picture messages, as well as using the Mobile IM program to connect with Windows Live, Yahoo! and AIM buddy lists. Google Talk continues to use its own separate app.

Internet:

The HTC Rhyme continues to use the same WebKit browser that we’ve seen in the past, as it displays web sites in similar fashion as to what you would see on your home PC. It works well, scrolling is fast, and pinch-to-zoom is also supported. When loading the PhoneArena.com web site (including all Flash content and ads), it took about 45 seconds to fully load using Verizon’s 3G EVDO Rev A data network. When using the SpeedTest.net app, we were able to get download speeds around 0.80-1.0Mbps and uploads were also around 1Mbps. Granted this is not nearly as fast as 4G LTE speeds, but for moderate web browsing and email use, it’s not terribly bad.



Camera:

The camera app has received a nice update as it now supports some extra features, such as 14 different visual effects, face detection, and manual image adjustments of the exposure, contrast, saturation, and sharpness. There is also a selection of 9 different scene modes to choose from.

Like most other HTC phones, the Rhyme does not come with a physical camera button. Instead the camera continues to auto-focus on the center square shown on the display, or you can move the square around if you want to change where it will focus. To capture the image, you simply press on shutter icon on the right side, and it takes the image almost instantly.

Pictures that we took outside on a sunny day using the Rhyme’s 5MP camera looked quite nice, as they were sharp and colors were natural and not over-saturated (like on the HTC ThunderBolt). Inside pictures also did well, but in low-light the quality does get grainy, and the LED flash isn’t very bright. Videos can be recorded at 1280x720p resolution, but they look jumpy as they are only recording at 15 frames-per-second.


HTC Rhyme Sample Video:



Software:

For GPS guided driving directions you have a choice of using Google Maps, which is free, or VZ Navigator, which is $10 per month. Both provide you with turn-by-turn directions and audio prompts, though their layout is slightly different. Our choice between the two is Google Maps, as it doesn’t have a monthly fee, but this is personal preference. We’ve used it in the South FL area, and with the 3G EVDO Rev A connection it is accurate and shows satellite images without having to wait for them to load.


For viewing your Microsoft Office files, there is the PolarisOffice app, which can view Word, Excel and PowerPoint, but you will have to download and install the Adobe Reader app to view PDF files.

Performance:

The HTC Rhyme comes with a Qualcomm MSM8655 1GHz processor, which allows the device to feel plenty quick when running Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread and HTC Sense UI 3.5 with the 7 homescreens. There is also 768MB of RAM on board, and when we ran the Quadrant benchmark app, we got a score of 1452, which is slightly lower than the HTC ThunderBolt’s score of 1700. When running the AnTuTu benchmark app, the Rhyme got a mark of 2489, again lower than the ThunderBolt’s mark of 2718.

Call quality was average while talking on the phone, as voices on both ends sounded good, but there was a small amount of a background “hiss” that we could hear at all times on our end, and we had to keep the earpiece volume set at medium, as any higher would cause distortion in the speaker. Signal reception was on-par with most other Verizon smartphones, as we would get 2-3 bars in our area and didn’t drop any calls.

One thing that we didn’t like about the HTC Rhyme is that its internal 1600mAh can’t be removed by the user, even though you can see part of it when removing the back cover to access the microSD memory card slot. Despite this, we were able to up to 7 hours of continuous talk time on a full charge, or about 16 hours of mixed usage, which includes some talk, web, email, app usage, and standby.

Conclusion:

If you like the plum color, then you should take a look at the HTC Rhyme, as it offers a lot, including the new HTC Sense 3.5 interface, 5MP camera, good call quality and battery life. But we can’t help but think that some people will be turned-off by the plum color, and would not consider the Rhyme because of it, despite it being a good phone otherwise. Because of this, it would be nice if the Rhyme were available in a few other color choices to appeal to a broader audience. Also, with the Rhyme’s current price of $199.99 with a 2-year contract, you might think about going with the HTC ThunderBolt at $249.99 if you are in a 4G area, as you would benefit from the faster data speeds.

Software on tested unit:
Android 2.3.4
Sense 3.5
Software 1.26.605.6

HTC Rhyme Video Review: