AT&T HTC HD7S - mini review
Executive Summary
HTC redefined the smartphone market when it launched the HTC EVO 4.3” screen smartphone last year. Size does matter and the new AT&T HTC HD7S doesn’t disappoint. Windows Phone 7 really shines on the HD7S with the terrific performance, big bright screen, and good battery life.
For those of you looking for a smart phone with decent storage capacity and a large screen, the HTC HD7S should be in the list of your candidates. It was for me and I have decided to keep it.
Screen
The screen is big and bright. I like big and bright, especially considering how near sighted I am. I don’t consider the HD7S screen to be the top of the food chain. That belongs to the Samsung Focus in the Windows Phone 7 devices.
For pure resolution, the iPhone 4 is certainly the device to beat. However, the iPhone 4 screen seems tiny in comparison to the 4.3” screen smartphones on the market. You don’t really notice a whole lot when you go from 3.5” to 4.3”, but give it a week and try to go back. That’s when the size really jumps out at you.
I spent some time comparing the HD7S screen and resolution side-by-side with the iPhone 4. I compared my inboxes, web browsers, twitter clients, apps available on both platforms, etc. The iPhone 4 does an amazing job with the screen real estate but the HD7S is very easy on the eyes, too. It’s a really tough call.
There is one thing about the screen defaults I am still experimenting with, even after nine days of HD7S use. I still haven’t decided on the auto brightness setting. Auto certainly saves battery life, but I really prefer the HIGH brightness setting on the HTC. I still need to experiment more in the Texas sun to make a long term decision.
There’s something else about the HTC screen I am curious to know if anyone else is seeing. On my device, the colors look better if I am holding it in my right hand. If I look at the device straight on, or hold it in my left hand thus angling the right edge slightly lower, I see a minor green tint. The device seems more perfectly color calibrated in my right hand so the left edge is sloping away. This is a hard one to describe.
I noticed this when I loaded some pictures for wallpapers. I have several pics I use for color calibrating my laptops, desktop LCD screens, etc. The first pic is Reach. The second is Spartan vs Elite. I noticed the HTC HD7S screen color variation when I started looking at these pictures on it more closely. I’ve been using these pictures for quite some time so it was something I picked up on right away. This is really minor and an untrained eye will likely not notice. In fact, most right handed folks won’t. And I’m guessing a small percentage of the lefties would assuming of course all of the devices are like mine.
Chassis
When I reviewed the HTC EVO last year, I noticed the device chassis wasn’t fitting perfectly. In fact, the lines on the unit I had were a little off leaving some gaps between the frame and the plastic. This seems to have been corrected for the most part with the HD7S. The chassis and frame seems more rigid and less prone to denting or bending.
Just to be on the safe side, I purchased a SPECK case to protect the back and edges. I don’t like the thin plastic back on the HD7S but considering it’s mostly housed inside the SPECK case, the device is protected. It also covers the gap/crack in the lower third of the back of the device where the back cover meets up with the fixed bottom. If you have the habit of sitting your phone on a wet counter or bar, you’d better get a case. The seam in the back is asking for trouble otherwise.
The ATT store I bought the HD7S at didn’t have any cases on the day I bought the device. I had to go get the SPECK case at a T-Mobile store. The rubber power button on the case I bought kept the actual HD7S power button pressed continually resulting in a perpetual reboot. I resolved this by cutting the button out of the case with a razor sharp Gerber knife. I’m sure I could have whittled some of the rubber out on the inside, but I didn’t really like the way it stuck up, so off with its head!
Battery Life
When I tested the HTC EVO and HD7 last year, neither phone had stellar battery life. In the case of the EVO, you could drain the battery pretty quickly with all of the radios turned on. The HD7 wasn’t great either. You could probably get through a day (8-12 hours) but that was about it for moderate to heavy users.
HTC seems to have improved the HD7S. I ran several battery tests and my worst test was 34 hours. In that test I had the screen brightness set to HIGH, two Exchange email boxes syncing at 15 (work) and 30 (personal) minutes intervals, GSM and WIFI radios active, and moderate to heavy use of the device. Please note that WIFI is off when the device is sleeping on battery power. It does wake up and connect when you are using the device, and I used it quite a bit during the 34 hours. If the GSM radio is turned off or not in use, the device squeaks out a couple of more hours of use.
The last test I ran was what I’d call more typical of my usage for a device when I am not traveling. I would define it as light use. Email was still syncing both Exchange inboxes, a low number of text messages to the spouse, a phone call here or there, but with long idle periods in between those activities. That test lasted 48 hours.
I haven’t taken some conference calls on the phone yet so I don’t know how long the battery lasts on talk time. I wouldn’t expect more than about 3-4 hours. The ATT website lists 4.5 hours of talk time. If you need more, you should probably consider a second battery to carry, extended life battery (and bulge in the back cover), or a cover that doubles as an extra battery.
Storage
The HD7S specs indicate it has 16GB of storage. The Settings | About information says it has 14.63GB of total storage. I currently have 9.88 of available storage on my device and that’s after syncing quite a bit of music via Zune. I don’t really have a ton of applications, games and pictures installed yet. I have no doubt I could fill it up easily and this is one of my few complaints about the HD7S and the rest of the Windows Phone 7 devices. I would like at least 32GB of onboard storage.
I worry about storage less now. I gave up the idea of combining a smartphone with an audio/video player. If you really can’t afford but one device, the HD7S will work, but these days I carry around three different computing devices. A slate device for reading, surfing and other leisure activities, my notebook for work, and a smartphone. The slate is now used for video playback. I have given up on the idea a smartphone can do it all. Thus storage is not longer as big an issue to me.
Performance and Applications
As you might expect, performance of the Windows Phone 7 OS is very good on this device. You have to give the WP7 team some credit for defining a platform and experience that has been consistent across the devices and carriers. I have personally tested the main four USA carriers at this point in some form or fashion. The user experience across them all has been very good.
I did notice a couple of the applications in this round of testing that have some performance issues. The Seesmic application seems to have some scrolling issues. I like the look and feel of the application but the performance is bad enough for me to punt and use the regular Twitter application instead. The point I’m making here is that developers can still ship apps that aren’t perfectly smooth.
Another example is the USA Today app. It’s never been a strong performer on iOS, but it also leaves a lot to be desired on Windows Phone 7. It’s still usable, but I don’t like the data download delay. There isn’t much excuse for this when the device is using my home WIFI network that is tied to the Verizon fiber optic network. No excuse at all.
When I compare the apps I like and use on iOS, it’s refreshing to see that the Marketplace in Windows Phone 7 is slowly but surely catching up to the iOS app store (for the Top applications). I haven’t looked at the Android Market lately so my basis for comparison there is old. I do however plan to purchase a “state-of-the-art” Android based slate soon so my point of reference will get refreshed after that.
I’m still missing some favorite applications. I would like to see a Chase, Fidelity, and America Airlines app. It would be nice to have a Speedtest.net app. The Engadget app for the iPhone is cool. Instagram should port their app. A msnbc.com app would be nice.
I would like to see feature parity between the iPad Bing app and the one on my HD7S. And for heavens sake, ship Photosynth for WP7. That’s a must!
The Music and Video Experience
The WP7 platform does have some unique apps, or apps that work quite well on this phone. The connection to my Zune subscription totally rocks. Being able to surf the Zune Marketplace when I am bored on the road is very cool.
To clarify, because I have a Zune subscription I can view the Zune Marketplace and listen to any of the music that is there. I don’t even need to download it. I can just click the play button and it streams right to the device.
If you decide to purchase a Zune subscription, I highly advise looking at the yearly price. You get 12 months for the price of 10. And don’t forget you get 10 songs each month in high quality .MP3 format which are DRM free.
I can of course rent movies or buy other music videos in the Zune Marketplace. The HTC HD7S supports playback of a wide variety of audio and video formats. With the 4.3” screen, watching a movie is very comfortable and easy on the eyes. I really don’t plan to use the device for video so I haven’t tested power consumption. If one of you does do some testing, let me know how your HD7S fares.
Radio reception on the HTC HD7S is far superior to any of the previous Windows Phone 7 devices I’ve tried. I can easily pickup all of the stations in the air over the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex complete with the RDS information. That simply wasn’t possible with the Samsung Focus. The headphones you plug in are used as the antenna and I am using the same SHURE ear buds I always have.
Equalizer settings would make the experience even better and although HTC ships an equalizer application in their WP7 hub, it doesn’t do anything for radio playback and very little on playback of stored audio or video. Hopefully this is being addressed in the platform with the “Mango” release for Fall 2011.
Speakers and Microphone
I have seen some comments about the sound of the HD7S being tinny. I have sensed this too. I can’t tell exactly what is causing it, but it appears the microphone is too sensitive and might be picking up the speaker at the top of the phone during phone conversations. That’s just a guess on my part. I have been using my phone with the volume on max. This is most likely causing the problem which is very minor. I asked my wife if she noticed any call quality differences when I am talking to her and she said she hasn’t really noticed a change. Therefore, the tininess might be just how it sounds to me when I am using the device. Time to lower the volume a bit and see if that helps.
The speakers are typical. They are good enough for a speaker phone (so you don’t have to hold it to your ear). But don’t expect big bass or full range with the little speaker on the front and rear.
Camera
I haven’t used smartphone cameras much. I carry a Canon G11 for point and shoot work and it does a superior job over all of the smartphones I’ve ever used. The HD7S isn’t bad but I wouldn’t trust it for family events or other precious moments. If you really want high quality shots, buy a device designed for photography.
As smartphones go, the five megapixel camera in the HD7S isn’t terrible. I’ve taken some pretty decent macro shots so far. I get comments on indoor group shots. The most common comment is around the super bright dual led flash. Most people don’t like the flash on the device. It’s TOO bright. This was also true for the T-Mobile HTC HD7. A control setting for that would be nice.
I’ve seen a lot of comments about camera controls in WP7. It will be interesting to see what improvements are coming in Mango for the camera features on devices like this.
Unlocking
I’ve been an ATT customer for a while now. I was curious to see if they would unlock my phone. I figured they would and sure enough I was able to get a unlock code from ATT Customer Service today. I will likely actually unlock the device tomorrow or the next day. I need to hook up with a T-Mobile friend and borrow a SIM to do that.
Summary
I really like the phone. I am keeping the HTC HD7S. Microsoft paid for part of the phone, and I paid for the rest. It was a hard decision. I like the screen on the Samsung Focus due to its brightness and clarity. I’d say the HD7S is number two in he screen department but I liked the larger form factor, chassis and other aspects over the Focus. It’s probably too big for a lot of people but I dig it.
I’ll continue to update this blog post over the next few weeks as I test more stuff. Let me know if you have any questions.