Overview
HTC have always made of solid, reassuringly weighty handsets and their first foray into Windows Phone 7 comes in the form of reassuringly weighty HTC Trophy.
It's the cheapest handset out of the new range of Windows Phone too - meaning you'll be able to grab one on a £25 a month or £400 sim-free. It's a Vodafone exclusive here in the UK and seems to be the cheapest way to board the Windows Phone express, coming free on a £25 a month contract.
Features
The design is very desirable with a fine strip of chrome around the 3.8 inch screen which boasts a very good resolution of 480×800 – It’s bright, sharp and crystal-clear, producing minimal blurring around the edges of text.
The HTC Trophy is quite different to any of HTC's previous phones when it comes to software - because of the all-new Microsoft mobile operating system. It offers a simple, intuitive interface, with a home screen consisting of dynamic tiles. It's ever so slick and very fast, and we’ve found Windows Phone 7 to be highly enjoyable to use.
The only real downside with the new operating system is the lack of a fully-fledge app store - so far the Windows Phone 7 app cupboard feels rather bare at the moment, although we have no doubt that we’ll see some really neat additions in the near future. Lets just hope that it blossoms into something like Xbox live - then it would be a compelling alternative to Apple current dominance and Android’s flea market. Also, there's no Flash support, and no cut and paste function.
Review
The HTC is far from the best in regards to internal storage, with only 8 GB on-board – now normally this wouldn't be a problem, as you would normally just bump that up with a microSD card, but Windows Phone 7 is far too uptight to give you such freedoms. So if you want to put a load media on it be aware of this drawback as some the other Window phones have offerings up to 16GB.
The camera on the back of the Trophy is a 5-megapixel affair and is supported by a single LED Flash. We were able to take some pretty tasty snaps. The camera software is simple and swift, so you won’t miss that special moment waiting for it to load, or get bogged down in menus. The Trophy also offers 720p video-recording capability too and was very smooth when we played it back.
The Trophy’s battery life is typical for a device of this calibre. So, don’t expect to get more than a few days of use from a single charge. You’ll get less than that if you use lots of data or run many memory-intensive apps.
The very thing that makes the Trophy a decent smart phone is also the thing that means it doesn’t really stand out from the crowd. This is because Microsoft imposes strict minimum-spec requirements on manufacturers which decide to bring handsets to Windows Phone 7.
This means every device must have a multi-touch display, a 1GHz processor, at least a 5-megapixel camera, an accelerometer, a compass, an FM radio tuner, the same hardware buttons, and so on.
The main benefit of this is that you’ll get a consistent, reliable Windows Phone 7 experience across all devices. The downside is that there’s really not much to distinguish Windows Phone 7 handsets from one another. The Trophy, in particular, bears a striking similarity to the HTC 7 Mozart, although the Trophy has a lower-resolution camera and is slightly cheaper.
Conclusion
We really like the HTC Trophy. It's jam-packed full of features and combine that with a new swift and sleek operating system, all be it a not fully formed one - it a pleasurable experience. Whether it can keep just entertained for a 24 month contract is a difficult to know. But rest assured Microsoft have the basis for something quite special, they just need time - after all they are coming into a market where they're 3 years behind the best.
Gaj-it Rating 5/5
More Details: Recombu
One thought on “Review: HTC Trophy Windows Phone 7”
good news: mugen has released extended battery for trophy, it has 1800mAh capacity – 50% more than the stock one! check it out here: http://www.mugen-power-batteries.com/mugen-power-1800mah-extended-battery-for-htc-7-trophy-t8686-htc-spark.html