HTC Trophy Review

Introduction:

Last of the major domestic players to get into the game with Windows Phone 7, Verizon Wireless can now offer their customers the new experience in Microsoft’s platform with the HTC Trophy. Although it’s essentially a 6-month-old model at this point, its $149.99 on-contract price point is just a tad below the usual spot we find most high caliber smartphones at nowadays, but it’s also a world phone as well. Considering that this is Verizon's WP7 launch handset, let’s see if it can entice customers!

Design:

Somewhat of a bummer, there’s nothing special with the HTC Trophy since its design is an exact facsimile to the European version that we reviewed – though, it sports a red theme internally. Clearly, it doesn’t quite embody the eye catching industrial design that we associate with HTC’s stable.



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

From the looks of it, the handset retains its distinguishable 3.8” WVGA (480 x 800) Super LCD display with support for 16.7 million colors. Easily, it’s by far one of the better display panels we’ve seen in use with HTC’s line of WP7 smartphones, thanks to its sharp details and deep production of iridescent colors.

As for the rest of the device, we find everything else in its usual location on its side. In the rear, you have a 5-megapixel auto-focus camera with LED flash and speaker grill. Meanwhile, removing its back cover offers access to its 1,300 mAh battery and SIM card slot.

Interface and Functionality:

Not surprisingly, the handset is powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8650 processor with 576MB of RAM, which offers a resounding, responsive, and quick experience with the platform.
 
Packing the most up-to-date Windows Phone 7 experience with the “NoDo” update already on board, it brings along some much-wanted features, like copy and paste, which wasn’t available during the platform’s initial launch. Out of the box, you can also see its affinity to Big Red since it’s set with the Verizon red theme activated.


Though cramped in space with its portrait style keyboard, it still exhibits a responsive feel as we speed type, but the landscape option is moderately better thanks to its larger footprint.


If you want to learn more about Windows Phone 7 and all of its core features and apps, then you can read about it more in our in-depth walkthrough.

Camera and Multimedia:

In general, the 5-megapixel shooter in the rear captures some passable looking shots – albeit, colors are on the dull side. Still, its LED flash does a decent job in lighting up the scenery.



Likewise, its 720p video recording is equally satisfactory with its 24 frames per second capture rate, clear audio recording, continuous auto-focus, and average looking details.

HTC Trophy Sample Video:



With the Zune experience in tow when playing songs, not only do we still like its presentation, but its audio quality is acceptable with its strong tones.


Meanwhile, the combinations of its beautiful looking display and snappy processor provides an invigorating video watching experience.

Internet and Connectivity:

Despite its lack of Flash support, Internet Explorer is undeniably still pretty good with its fast page loads, tight navigation, and proper renders to make the experience more than satisfactory.


Fortunately, the HTC Trophy is a world phone that will work domestically via Verizon’s network, but it’s even able to work in many parts of the world as well thank to its built-in GSM radios.

Performance:

Calling quality is really great with the handset seeing that it produces clear and natural sounding voices on both ends of the line, though, its speakerphone emits some muffled tones at the loudest volume setting.

Retaining a good amount of bars in high coverage areas, signal strength remains consistent during our testing in the greater Philadelphia region.

Getting 5.5 hours of continuous talk time on a single charge, it’s better than the 4.9 hours of talk time rated by the manufacturer, but seems rather low compared to the competition. Still, we managed to get by a solid 8-hour work shift with no problems at all on normal usage.
 

Conclusion:

Honestly, it’s rather disappointing to see that Verizon is recycling a previous model and making the Trophy as its launch Windows Phone 7 handset. Besides its world phone feature, there’s nothing spectacular to set it apart from the other recently released WP7 devices, but its $150 on-contract price makes it an even harder sell at this point. Unfortunately, this is the only solution available to customers who wish to experience WP7 – meaning, you’ll need to accept it for what it is.

Software version of the reviewed unit:
OS Version: 7.0.7389.0

HTC Trophy Video Review: