Overview:
After the success of the HTC Excalibur, the Taiwanese manufacturer has looked to develop on a winner with a successor, the HTC Snap. So how does this phone stand apart from the executive crowd? Let's take a look.
Reivew:
The Snap is just the kind of handset you'd expect from HTC, functional, practical and on the inexpensive side.
For £20 a month, you can be the proud owner of a full QWERTY keyboard, and look very corporate indeed. http://www.mobileshop.com/mobile-phones/htc-snap/pay-monthly.html
That may give the impression that the Snap is all about looks over substance, which is far from the truth with this handset.
Featuring WinMo 6.1, the Snap includes the Office Mobile suite of Word, Excel and PowerPoint applications.
It also makes it easy to configure with Microsoft Exchange so you can ensure you'll always be on top of that flagged email. If Exchange isn't your email of choice, there are standard POP3 and IMAP email options as well.
Bringing the phone into the social sphere, the Snap comes with a Windows Live suite of apps, which include Live Messenger and direct access to Hotmail.
With thousands of annoying work emails hitting your inbox every day, it would be handy to go directly to go to that important message from your girlfriend about dinner tonight.
Well, HTC thought so too and have included Inner Circle, which allows you to nominate your top ten people and will push all of their missives to the top of your inbox at the click of a button.
Connectivity-wise, the HTC Snap has built in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS.
For your off-hours, the phone has a camera that doubles as a video recorder. At just 2 megapixels, it's not exactly the best specs out there, but will do the job for a few interesting Facebook uploads.
One feature that is a bit of a letdown, is HTC's decision to opt for a miniUSB headphone jack instead of a standard 3.5mm one. This restricts the type of headphones you can use to listen to Britney as you update that accounts spreadsheet.
The overall design of the HTC Snap gets the thumbs up from us, with a soft rubber finish and rounded edges making it very comfy in the palm of your hand.
It is available on a range of carriers at the £25.00 per month mark.
The Gaj-It Verdict:
Design: 8/10
Usability: 8/10
Features: 8/10
Value: 8/10
We Say:
HTC's mix of design, features and affordability make the Snap a great handset for smaller businesses who need to stay connected but want to keep tabs on the budget cap. As a basic business phone, the HTC Snap has done away with an excess of features you would probably never use anyway and but with the Inner Circle function, will still keep your interest as you edit your Word documents.
2 thoughts on “Review: HTC Snap – The Budget Business Phone.”
Generous 8/10. Mind you I must admit it don’t look bad.
I got this phone 3 months ago as an upgrade from a Nokia E66 and must say, I am disappointed. As far as the business capabilities of the phone are concerned, especially email, it’s awesome, but thats really all there is.
The Microsoft office suite loaded on the phone does not enable you to write any documents, only read them (and this is a functionality I used quite frequently on the E66). You would think that to compensate for the inability to write Word documents, the Snap would then at least have a basic Notes functionality…WRONG! I’ve had to resort to typing numerous draft sms’s to try overcome this most basic of failures.
Added to that, the fact that you basically can’t use the speakerphone function if a call comes in after your phone has locked is also a HUGE negative. You have to tell the person on the other line to hold on while you take the phone away from your ear, press the ’unlock’ button, type in your unlock code, press ok, then only press the speakerphone function..with today’s fast paced lifestyle, this process really proves to be more than annoying.
Another thing that a user of this phone (who in this case unfortunately happens to be me) must get used to, is that there are no “Exit†or “close†buttons on any of the applications on this phone. When you are done with something, you either select the back arrow repeatedly until you get back to the home screen or you press the home button..either way the applications you had open are left running in the background chowing your onboard memory without you realizing it. Sure enough there is a “Task Manager†functionality which you can use to shutdown the background processes, but would an exit button on each application really have been so bad?? I think not.
The 2 megapixel camera makes this phone unsuitable if you ever plan to take good quality high resolution photo’s. I guess the assumption held by HTC when developing this phone is that people who buy smartphones don’t do so for the great photo’s they can take, right? True only if you walk around with your digital camera in your purse as backup.
I find folder navigation also a bit tedious and have battled sometimes to locate where things I downloaded saved to on the phone.
Verdict – if all you need is a phone that makes and receives calls (with some difficulty) and has a great email functionality, and not much else, Snap’s your man. Not being able to do something as easy as writing my grocery list on the phone has really made it second best in my books.
Good luck to any of you who buy it.