HTC HD2 Windows Phone Smartphone Comments

The phone looks gorgeous but it's a bit big for me - I didn't get an iPhone for that reason. Still, it looks awesome...

How prominent is Windows 6.5? I can't imagine HTC will have let it out that much and I'm guessing that even the menus will be finger friendly given the screen's size. I take it - as it's WinMo - it'll also support pretty much every codec out there for video?

Possibly the 1st true iphone contender...

This makes me extremely happy because it raises the bar in terms of hardware for all the mobile phone makers. With sony ericsson bring out the Xperia 10 for Q1 2010. i cannot wait to see the kind of phones destined for 2010 from samsung, motorola, nokia and Apple.
The downside to this is what kind of prices high-end smartphones will be tagged with 2 or 3 years from now. £500 for a phone! no way...*silence*.... no really?!

ahem! So TR, how many will plan on getting this in the office :D

I like it, I have big enough hands.. Will it fit in my pocket?

@xenos: Jeans or jacket?

Too big. With such a screen size I wouldn't even class this as a phone, but a tablet that happens to have phone functionality.

Edward, the HD2 doesn't run TouchFLO - it runs Sense, like the HTC Hero. If you want confirmation of that fact, check out the link below to HTC's HD2 product page.

http://www.htc.com/uk/product/hd2/overview.html

Please update the review accordingly.

What better review to start the weekend, After orange iphone Epic Fail iphone pricing i will go for this one sim free.

Wasn't expecting a review this quickly.

Modaco have a great and very long video of it covering just about everything. It looks impressively fast and there wasn't any slow down even with various apps running. It's too big for me but apart from that it really does look nice. And I don'think regular WM pops up much at all. HTC have reskinned quite a few of the legacy screens too.

Can't wait till the hardware becomes mores mainstream and starts appering on other phones.

I'd like to know more about the bettery life

you say it lasted 2 days of extensive use... how extensive was this?

I was waiting for the Nokia N900, but this may tempt me away!

Don't be put off by Windows Mobile 6.5, I've been using a HTC Touch Diamond 2 since april (my first touch screen phone and windows phone) and absolutely love it.

The newer build of 6.5 is better than 6.1 better looking graphics more finger friendly but not terrible as some make it out to be. If you're used to using a computer then I reckon the transition is pretty straight forward on these phones because that's what they essential are.

The fact that this phone is Windows Mobile 6.5 means you'll have excellent "extra" support from the xda-developers which in turn relates to a bucket load of extra homebrew apps and tweaks the average user wouldn't be able to find.

As such I've already got the HD2 Interface ported on my Touch Diamond 2... the benefits of having an HTC, longetivity and being able to upgrade it with ease :-)

Ive been using this rom on my Touch HD for a while now and I really like it. It is awfully slow at times, especially texting but then thats where the new hardware comes in. I just feel they went a bit mad with the size but some people seem to love that.

If I feel I can tolerate a phone this size I will buy it but if HTC's rumoured Dragon appears (soon) as a 3.7 inch snapdragon Sense 2 kickass device I then there will be no contest.

WM6.5 supports kinetic scrolling natively, though developers can choose to not support it, that's hardly MS or HTCs fault and really not grounds for criticism.

Also, you criticise WM, though all your earlier complaints about fiddly settings or whatever no longer apply! All the native settings applications have been replaced by HTCs implementation, and the capacitive zoom lets you zoom in on fiddly things that haven't been upgraded.

I suspect if you gave this device to most people they probably wouldn't even realise it was a WM device, and even if they did and they despised WM, it's still a brilliant device with only the size being a possible detracting factor.

For most WM users, the stylus is useful for example in the notes application it's very useful for quick sketches, but you lose that with capacitive, so that may well be a downside.

Also, Sense is built on the concept of "make it mine" so if you don't use twitter, you can disable it, you don't need the long list of tabs on Manila, though to me, it makes a lot more sense having everything integrated than having "an app for that" that takes 15 seconds to load to tell you that someone sent you a direct message on Twitter.

ARGH!! WHY WinMo!! Can you install Android on it?

For £500 it's a no buy unless it's bundled with a personal on demend genie.

I'm tempted by this. It'd be a cert for me if it had any internal storage of its own.. with it being that size was there really no room for memory?

I don't think £500 sim free is overly expensive for what's included. If it had even 8GB of internal storage it would be the first device I've seen that I'd be happy to use as both a PMP and a phone.

If you factor in the cost of a couple of memory cards, its very similar in price to the 32GB iPhone and much better specced.. so yeah, not cheap but not outrageous.

Knock £100 off and we'll talk..

Did O2 give you any dates for release? :)

I've just realised you said it had a 1100mAh battery, it's 1230mAh...

Two major minus points for me:

1) The limited 640x480 video recording. There are a few phones which are doing DVD recording now (Nokia N900 , Motorola Droid)
2) Windows Mobile. Dreadfully old despite HTC's overlay interface trying to hide it. A few clicks and your back in 1999.The term "Mutton dressed as Lamb" springs to mind
Also, the Windows Marketplace. Only 250+ apps? A lot of them being overpriced

Give me Android 2.0 plus DID-Resolution recording and I'll come knocking

@Kebab - yes you can install Android on this device, if you know how to. I mean Android is Open Source can be made to run on pretty much anything you want, that doesn't mean that it'll be easy to install it on this device. Unless you are some kind of genius.
Installing Android on this device will be just as easy as installing Android on the HTC Touch HD (1).

@JimB007
The Marketplace may be a bit empty but there are thousand of apps which are easily available for free online.

@Nicholas Pires: the problem with running WM isn't necessarily WM itself (although anytime you have to zoom in on fiddly bits is a cludge in my book and shows the inherent flaws of the software) it's the add-on software. This is a workhorse phone so surely you're going to want to install applications. The INSTANT that you do you're back into a horrible, non-touch friendly world. The marketplace app itself is, ironically, a prime example of that. Simply not good enough considering the cost of the handset.

In general terms it's a nice idea but this is never going to have any traction outside of us web geeks. I used to have a HTC Universal and while it was a great portable computer it was a crap phone simply because it was far far too big. Even stuff like the iPhone is pushing what people really want to carry with them, why on earth would they go for this monster. It's a nice shiny bit of tech but I'd be amazed if it scores any major mainstream use.

a shame really as i like both the dimensions and hardware,and the software can be changed,but £500 pounds is bizare,you could get 2 ps3' with 4 games or a 40"= telly for that price.

Every time a tasty Windows phone hits the market, someone always says 'can I install Android on it?'.

I feel your pain. It's clear that what people want are Android phones which are packed to the gills with overkill hardware, yet Windows phones still receive the best hardware. Why is that? Don't the manufacturers want to sell what their customers are clamouring for?

I really hope the Xperia X10 and HTC Dragon are just the beginning of a new generation because it's taken too long coming.

Typed on an HTC Hero :)

I have had the HD on contract for a year so the HD2 will be worth considering when I upgrade. Unlike the iPhone where there is only one place to get software, WinMo has several 'shops' as well as developers who sell direct - eg SPB - their Mobile Shell is an alternative to HTC's overlay options. And despite coming from a stylus-driven Palm I haven't used my HD stylus for 11 months - even with the HD screen WinMo is perfectly workable when you do end up in it.

"Don't the manufacturers want to sell what their customers are clamouring for?"

No, not always...if you get a chance see the doco-film 'Who killed the electric car?'. There's always a big player with their own agenda to forward :)

@BOFH_UK - that's a really good point about the installation of WM apps wrecking the 6.5 experience. I suppose a lot of the apps for WM were written ages ago and will be anything other than finger friendly.

@S Lewis: I totally agree, have had a HD(1) for the past year and I don't need the stylus for most occasions, and basically only use it when I have dirty fingers and don't want to smear the screen (reading news feeds during lunch for example) Granted I have a 6.5 XDA-Developers ROM flashed on it so the check-boxes are larger, but even so, it's still useable without a stylus if your fingers aren't flat at the end!

@lifethroughalens: there's also the depressing fact that in most cases the customer is NOT the end user, the customer is actually the network operators: eg. Orange being pretty darn stuborn about not taking on a phone unless they can customise the base operating system to include their "hard coded" shop shortcuts etc (an exclusion possibly the iPhone)

@BOFH_UK: I also agree that it's sometimes true that certain add-ons don't really continue the experience, but it's entirely possible to find alternatives for these that are fine and finger friendly (obviously marketplace isn't one of them though!)

You can't forget that there are legitimate business apps that rely on Windows Mobile. Whilst the standard Excel that comes with the phones could really be a bit more finger friendly, there are plenty of business apps that depend on that 'old' Windows Mobile (or CE) functionality.

Dear TrustedReviews,

Can you please stop censoring my comments that try to helpfully point out mistakes that you have made in your reviews, e.g. the comment I had made a couple of days ago on this review pointing out that the HD2 doesn't run TouchFLO as you said, but rather HTC Sense. Heck, I even provided a link to the HTC site for you to check out yourself and verify my claim.

Once again, please check out the following link and update your review accordingly. Credit for the correction also wouldn't go amiss, especially since whenever I point out mistakes on reviews, they are simply not published and ignored.

http://www.htc.com/europe/product/hd2/overview.html

PSV

What happened to that video review guys?

That's very poor on HTC's behalf - These units are now available from Vodafone and T-Mobile in the UK with O2's launch pencilled in for the 23rd (finger's crossed) and stock is filtering through to all the online retailers.

I wonder why they have such a tiny selection of review samples? It seems to be the same in the US where engadget have been waiting a while for a replacement review sample for ages. Surely the more review samples they get out, the more press pages & free PR they get?