HTC HD mini review, Price, pictures, Details, model specifications
There was a time when Windows Mobile used to rule the smartphone seas. Then along came Symbian but that’s a whole other story. It was touchscreen that showed to all the willing challengers that Windows Mobile is just too big to turn around quickly enough and catch the new wind. HTC however seem to disagree and dispel doubts of jumping ship. They have not given up on the cause and the HTC HD mini is the living proof.
HTC HD mini price سعر اتش تى سى
HTC HD mini price سعر اتش تى سى
So, mini is perhaps the right approach to users who would otherwise feel timid about giving Windows Mobile a try – especially with so many touchscreen temptations around. On the other hand, it does matter whose mini version it is. The almighty HD2 was the first PocketPC with a capacitive screen and a Snapdragon core.
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Now, the HTC HD mini is obviously shorter on size, resolution and processing power. But it may be well worth the resources invested in making it what it is – a pocket-friendly, but still powerful handset with solid build, slick design and a touch-friendly UI.
Check out the HTC HD mini key strengths and possible turn-offs in the lists below to get an idea if this is the handset that will suit you.
Key features
- 3.2″ 65K-color HVGA capacitive touchscreen with multi-touch input
- Compact body and bold industrial design
- Windows Mobile 6.5.3 Professional OS with Sense UI
- Qualcomm MSM7227 600 MHz CPU and 384MB RAM
- Quad-band GSM support with dual-band HSDPA 7.2Mbps and HSUPA 2 Mbps
- Wi-Fi connectivity
- Built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS support
- 5 MP autofocus camera with touch focus
- VGA video recording at 30fps
- microSD card slot
- Standard microUSB port and Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
- Standard 3.5mm audio jack
- Stereo FM radio with RDS
- MS Office Mobile document editor
- Opera 9.5 web browser
- YouTube client, Facebook and Twitter integration
- Very good audio output quality
- Excellent loudspeaker performance
Main disadvantages
- Poor display sunlight legibility
- No dedicated camera key and no lens cover
- Card slot under the battery cover
- No DivX/XviD video support out-of-the-box
- Preloaded CoPilot Live navigation software is a trial version only
- No secondary video-call camera
- No voice dialing
- No handwriting recognition
- Unreliable Flash support in IE Mobile
We all know there’s more to a contemporary smartphone (touchscreen at that) than its spec sheet. The HTC HD mini certainly has the pedigree but the verdict will only be passed on its performance.
Design and construction (continued)
Moving on to the front inevitably brings us to the 3.2” capacitive touchscreen of HVGA resolution. Its image quality is pretty decent, though nowhere near Super AMOLED standards (not even regular AMOLED). In the TFT world the HD mini doesn’t rank too bad at all.
The HD mini has a HVGA display, instead of the WVGA unit of the HTC HD2. The downsides are obvious but the good news is the mini doesn’t need a 1 GHz Snapdragon to offer similar performance.
User interface – Windows Mobile is all but gone
HTC are reportedly pondering their own OS – we’re this close to thinking they’ve done it already. Starting with TouchFLO and following with Sense, HTC have been continually painting over the aging interface of WinMo, and aside from a few blank spots, everything is silky smooth Sense UI on the HD mini.
The Programs menu uses the honeycomb pattern from Windows Mobile 6.5.3, and that’s one of the better changes 6.5 brought.
Icons within the main menu are easy to rearrange: a press and hold is enough to move the frequently used icons to the top. However, the menu structure is flat and can quickly become overcrowded with icons.
There are a few folders, but you can’t move shortcuts into them or create new folders.
Other places left untouched by HTC’s pixie dust are the file manager, the email app and the advanced options when editing a contact, but when using the HD mini you’ll spend most of the time in Sense UI land.
Time to look at the centerpiece of the Sense UI – the homescreen. It uses the well-known tabbed interface, with plenty of eye candy for anything from the weather forecast to messages, photos and so on.
A lot of the key functionality resides on the homescreen – there’s a tab for almost anything you can think of. In the HTC HD2 review, we had an in-depth look into each tab, so you can check it out for more details.
We’ll go over each tab again, but we won’t waste too much time – they are quite intuitive and you can get going without a manual.
The Home tab gives you access to the revamped calendar, world clock and alarm. Swiping up brings out a dock in which you can assign nine quick links to almost any app or setting on your phone.
Contact manager is great, embraces Facebook
Windows Mobile is no longer targeting corporate users mainly but top notch contact management and synchronization features are still easily taken for granted. HTC however have turned the ugly duckling of an interface into a beautiful Sense UI swan, but also built on the features to make the contact app even better.
Contacts use a tabbed interface, similar to the homescreen and you can navigate it the same way – by dragging a finger over the shortcut bar or by onscreen sweeps.
You can search for a specific contact with the alphabet scroll or by gradual typing of the name. There are two ways to organize contacts – favorites (the ones from the People tab on the homescreen) and Groups. Favorites is like a special group and it gets its own tab in the Contacts app.
The next tab is Updates & Events, which displays updates from your contacts and has a shortcut to your unread messages. The last one is the Call History tab.
Excellent call management
Making calls is always a priority for any phone and PocketPCs such as the HD mini are no exception. And like most other recent HTC handsets, this one keeps to the high standard of in-call quality, crisp and loud sound and strong signal reception.
When you dial someone, the HD mini vibrates to let you know when the call is connected. The proximity sensor automatically locks the display when you put it at your ear to prevent accidental presses.
The Phone application offers Smart dialing, so you hardly ever need to go to the Contact list in order to dial a number.
Great messaging
The HTC HD mini supports SMS, MMS and email. Both text and multimedia messages share an inbox and an editor – and thanks to Sense UI you can enjoy thumb scrolling in the inboxes and in longer messages.
The image gallery does multi-touch
The HD mini offers a nice thumbnail browser straight in the Photos & Videos tab on the Home screen – and we already saw it in the UI chapter. It’s the best way to quickly preview al the images on the phone, both preloaded and captured by you.
Music player iPod-style
Just like recent HTC PocketPCs, the HD mini has a good music player that makes excellent use of Album art. The music player is accessible straight on the Sense home screen with a cool Apple-like Cover Flow animation.
The FM radio does the job perfectly
The HTC HD mini built-in FM radio naturally requires the headset to be plugged-in. It has an excellent interface much like the rest of the multimedia players on board and offers memory for some 20 radio stations.
Very good audio output
The HTC HD mini is among the louder handsets we have tested recently but fortunately that does not come at the price of increased distortions. On the contrary, the audio output of the WinMo hadnset is very good overall, with no major weaknesses.
The frequency response of the handset keeps within the +-1 dB limit with ease for the whole range and the noise levels are excellent. The same holds true for the dynamic range and the stereo crosstalk of the HD mini.
Video player hasn’t heard of DivX
The HD mini comes with the standard – and sadly underperforming – Windows Media Player. It only manages mp4 and 3gp and for DivX/XviD support you will need a third party application.
Watching videos on the HD mini is enjoyable but videos will either have to be cropped or watched in a letterbox format – and of course converted to a format that WMP can handle.
5MP snapper needs further tweaking
The HTC HD mini has a 5 megapixel auto focus camera producing photos with a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels. It’s left bare without a flash.
The camera interface is intuitive user interface and shoots in landscape mode.
It lacks a dedicated camera key, but autofocus is handled the iPhone way – it automatically refocuses whenever you move the device. Once focus is locked, you can take the picture by pressing the virtual capture button. There is touch-focus too.
Depending on the settings, the viewfinder is cropped to full the entire screen or there’s a black strip on the right. The second option has its advantages – you can see the entire scene and the black strip is where the two constantly visible controls are (they can’t be hidden).
Poor video recording
The video capturing capabilities of the HTC HD mini are unimpressive – they max out at CIF@25 frames. The bitrate of the videos is low, which leaves more compression artifacts than details. Switching between H.264 and MPEG-4 in the settings menu didn’t improve the situation.
Update 26 Apr: It turns out that the HD mini is capable of recording VGA videos @ 30fps, but only when the MPEG4 codec is selected. Unfortunately there’s not too great of improvement in the overall quality as compression is still excessive and neither contrast nor color rendering is impressive.
Here goes the new sample video captured in VGA resolution.
The interface of the camcorder resembles that of the still camera. You can only adjust the white balance, resolution, brightness and finally add some color effects.
Connectivity to match the HD2
When it comes to connectivity the HTC HD mini is an equal to the HD2 – HSDPA 7.2Mbps, HSUPA 2Mbps, Wi-Fi, stereo Bluetooth + EDR. Wi-Fi support is limited to b/g, which is something to consider if you use the n standard at home.
The HD mini has quad-band GSM support and dual-band 3G – 900 and 2100 MHz bands are supported (that is Europe and the like – you’re welcome to check out our Worldwide GSM Network Bands distribution database).
USB 2.0 connections are supported as well, through a microUSB port rather than ExtUSB, which is featured on most HTC phones. When connected to a computer, the HD mini prompts you to select among ActiveSync, Mass Storage or Modem mode.
The 3.5mm audio jack for the audio purists is also onboard.
Web browser – IE wins over Opera, just barely
Traditionally, Opera is the browser of choice for HTC – it comes preinstalled on the HD mini. But the default browser is still the Internet Explorer Mobile 6.
The key advantage of IE Mobile over Opera is Flash – and the key disadvantage was lack of pinch zoom, which has been sorted. However, there are still problems with IE Mobile. Anyway, since both are preinstalled, you can choose the one that best suits you.
The organizer we like the most
Windows Mobile offers several time-management features and all of them are easily syncable with Outlook. On the HD mini, the standard interface is kept under wraps at all times. Even creating a new event (which in the HD2 was done via the non-modified UI) is nicely skinned.
The Calendar offers daily, weekly, monthly and even yearly views. All of them are available in the Sense UI, but the left context key allows you to switch only between the monthly and agenda views. For the others you will need to go to the menu.
Apps and stuff
The HTC HD mini comes with plenty of preloaded applications: an MP3 Trimmer, HTC Peep, Facebook, Wi-Fi Router, World Card Mobile, a YouTube application and a Streaming Media manager.
The file manager on the HD mini is the standard Windows Mobile one and won’t surprise anyone – it has the full functionality you need. The phone offers a small amount of user available storage – about 160MB available to the user. This is barely sufficient and you’ll definitely find yourself needing a microSD card.
Embedded GPS, CoPilot Live 8 trial to whet your appetite
The HTC HD mini features a built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS support. It means you can download current satellite data over Wi-Fi, the 2G/3G network or via ActiveSync for a much faster satellite lock. It can be done in seconds thanks to a handy tool in the settings menu.
