HTC HD2

The HTC Touch HD was quite an impressive device at its time because of its huge 3.8-inch screen and wealth of other smartphone features. Now, the company has raised the bar even higher with its sequel, the HD2. This Windows Mobile (WM) 6.5 smartphone comes with a 4.3-inch WVGA (800 x 480) touchscreen display and 1GHz Snapdragon processor. The HD2 is costly at S$1,188, but it's the best WM smartphone out there, bar none.

Design

With a 4.3-inch screen, you'd expect the HD2 to be pretty large. This is true as it is 120.5mm long and 67mm wide. Suffice to say, it won't fit comfortably in tight jeans pockets and ladies with tiny handbags may have to go shopping for a larger tote bag. But those who have used and are fine with the previous Touch HD will find the HD2 very similar in size as it's merely 5mm longer and wider. The thickness has even been reduced a little, down to 11mm from the HD's 12mm. That doesn't include the camera module though, which sticks out quite a bit from the back--more on that later.
The reason the HD2 is only a few mm larger than the Touch HD and yet comes with a significantly bigger display is because there is hardly any bezel. The sides of the panel extend almost to the edge of the device and the top and bottom edges are less than one thumb width away from their respective edges. If it wasn't for the HTC logo, we won't be surprised should someone mistake this device for a portable media player (PMP) or personal navigation device (PND). Even then, they wouldn't be too far off the mark as the screen is excellent for displaying images, videos, text and maps, making the HD2 a great substitute for dedicated PMPs and PNDs in the visual capability department.
We really like the use of materials--a soft touch finish for the sides and most of the back with a metal battery cover. Unlike other WM devices which use a resistive touchscreen that depresses slightly upon pressure (necessary to close a pinpoint connection between two LCD layers), the capacitive touchscreen on the HD2 is solid to the touch, much like what you'll find on the iPhone or most Android devices. We'll discuss in detail how this affects the use of WM in the Features section.

Here's how much larger a 4.3-inch screen is compared with the iPhone's 3.5-inch LCD.
(Click for larger image)

Buttons on the front of the HD2 include the standard Call and End keys on either sides. The three other buttons between them include Home, Start (for calling up the main menu) and Back keys. Aside from these, there's a volume rocker on the left edge. First implemented on the HTC Touch2, the HD2's End key also doubles as a power button. Long-time WM users used to having a dedicated power button may experience pressing the wrong button initially, but it's not a big deal and most should be able to adjust their habits after a day or two.
The standard 3.5mm audio port is starting to become a regular feature on HTC phones, and the HD2 is no exception. This is found on the base beside the micro-USB connector. Yes, you heard right, the HD2 has dropped the mini-USB found on almost all previous HTC devices for the smaller micro-USB standard. This is not surprising as there has been an industry-wide push for the latter. Furthermore, the inclusion of a dedicated 3.5mm connecter means the audio capabilities of the enhanced mini-USB port (dubbed HTC ExtUSB) that the company typically uses is not necessary anymore.

Features

Given how large it is, you expect the HD2 to do a lot--and you'll be right. This smartphone is packed to the gills when it comes to connectivity features including HSDPA support with theoretical limits of 7.2Mbps download and 2Mbps upload speeds. There's also the usual fare of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS for satellite navigation.
There's even a feature that links your cellular data and Wi-Fi connections called Wi-Fi Router. This hooks you up to your HSDPA network before sending out a Wi-Fi signal so other devices will identify the HD2 as a wireless hotspot. We tried this out and it worked seamlessly. It may not seem like a big deal because WM devices have always been capable of acting as modems using Bluetooth or USB tethering, but that works for only one computer. The Wi-Fi Router application lets you share your data plan with multiple devices simultaneously, with the host devices needing just the ability to connect to Wi-Fi networks--no complicated setups or compatibility issues. Just make sure you have a good data plan to avoid bill shock.
That said, let's not pretend this is a new idea, because it isn't. Third-party applications have allowed such behavior on various smartphone platforms, though credit should be given to HTC for making it a default feature that's easy to use.
TouchFlo has been a mainstay on HTC's WM devices. This custom interface has evolved since its introduction in the HTC Touch and has made its devices more user-friendly compared with the outdated default WM interface. With the HD2, the company changed the name of its software to HTC Sense, just like what it's called on its Android devices. Don't be fooled by the name though, as it still works more like TouchFlo than the widget-focused interface on the Android-based HTC handsets.
So, like previous iterations, you get a Home screen with a large digital clock and a row of tabs that give you convenient access to items such as contacts, emails and calendar. A Twitter tab has also been thrown into the mix, so you can read updates without having to launch a separate app. As with the last version of TouchFlo 3D, you get an integrated contacts list that shows all interaction with each person, including their Facebook and Twitter updates, aside from essential ones like text messages and emails.
As mentioned earlier, the touch-sensitive technology used in the HD2 is capacitive, which responds to fingertips rather than a pointed stylus. This has the advantage of being more sensitive and adds support for multitouch. As we've seen in previous HTC WM devices, sub-menus have been tweaked so they are larger and more fingertip-friendly, making it possible to tap on most items without worrying about pinpoint precision. While we enjoyed this more than the resistive variety, it's important to remember that WM was not designed for capacitive screens and some third-party applications will have icons positioned closely together, making it hard for fleshy fingertips to make the correct selections. Even in HTC's preinstalled Peep for Twitter updates, we found the program unable to distinguish when we wanted to select an embedded link and instead kept bringing up the context menu for replying to the tweet. Cases like these made us think the HD2 has hardware that's ahead of its time, given the limitations of the operating system.
Multitouch is enabled on the HD2, so you can pinch to zoom in certain applications. This is most useful in the Opera browser when viewing Web pages. Comparison to the iPhone is inevitable in this case as the Safari browser on Apple's device is arguably the best when it comes to rendering accuracy and speed in smartphones. We cleared the cache in the HD2 and an iPhone 3GS and loaded a series of Web pages using the same Wi-Fi connection. In all instances, Apple's Safari was either as fast or up to 5 secs faster in rendering Web pages fully. Loading asia.cnet.com, for example, took 11 secs on the iPhone and 14 sec on HD2's Opera browser. While it's not faster, the larger and higher-resolution screen made reading text easier on the eyes. Furthermore, when you zoom in on chunks of text, the browser on the HD2 automatically reformats the paragraphs so no side scrolling is necessary, making reading of articles more convenient on the HTC.